Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia
Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of
Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of
Masculine Modes of Female Subjectivity: The Case of Jahanara Begam
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Published:October 2015
Afshan Bokhari, 2015. "Masculine Modes of Female Subjectivity: The Case of Jahanara Begam", Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia, Anshu Malhotra, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley
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This chapter considers the crucial Mughal-Sufi relationship of the princess Jahanara Begam (1614–1681) with her pir Mullah Shah Badakshi (1585–1661) and in conjunction with her two Sufi treatises, Munis al-arvah (1640) and Risalah-i Sahibiyah (1641) and her prominent patronage within a politically pivotal moment during Emperor Shah Jahan’s reign (r. 1628–58). It locates the modes of masculine strategies that the princess appropriated to cultivate the multiple subjects and objects of her representation and to uphold the Mughal sociopolitical and religious ideology. The work considers Jahanara’s textual and architectural narratives as forms of male Mughal prerogatives and bureaucratic practice that allowed the princess as the emperor’s “consort queen” to advance imperial agendas, sustain sovereignty, and conceptualize her subjecthood/objecthood. The concept of the imperial self as both a synecdoche of royal subject and representative has been determined by recent scholarship on first-person narratives that crafts and conceptualizes identity as both physical and ephemeral and simultaneously imbues textual and physical space.
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