Fragmentary pleasures: Masculinity, urban spaces, and commodity politics in Delhi

Abstract

Building upon theorizations of gender, space and subjectivity, and consumer cultures, this article explores contemporary masculinity politics in Delhi. It focuses upon a group of young men of the Bajrang Dal, an organization of the Hindu Right, in order to explore their lives as urban subjects whose actions unfold across a number of registers, of which 'Hindu nationalism' is just one. The discussion embarks upon an ethnography of 'fragmentation' and 'splitting', presenting these as significant processes in themaking of masculine identities. It suggests that these concepts foreground the ways in which new consumer cultures play a role in the making of masculine power and the notion of an 'all-consuming man'.