Home » Editions » Volume 006 : Pleasure and Danger
Volume 006
Pleasure and Danger
Desire on the edge of a cliff
June 2025
Looking at the human experience – especially as it intersects with desire, sexuality, sex, body, age, violence, hunger and thirst – through the lens of the psyche.
This is Part V in a series on the psyche and sexuality, based on the author’s research, reflections and analysis, and looks at the sexual fantasies that seemingly pose a threat to our feminist politics. The essays in this series explain key psychoanalytic concepts and offer pedagogical possibilities while working on sexuality.
The digital world was supposed to give us the freedom to exist as we are, as who we can be. Yet, we’ve seen patriarchal structures underlying the way intimacy is shared online. Dating apps animate the romance of seeing our fullest selves — but do they continue to be liberating opportunities? Or is this one more way of getting locked into an identity?
The figure of the 'stand-up comedian', a lone performer who directly delivers jokes to the audience mostly without props, is very new to South Asia. But the 'jester' or the ‘fool’ is a scandalous — and thriving — figure in popular folk theatre, an art form that continues to captivate the majority of the region.
If you have lived through or ever wondered about the era of rented cassette tapes and video parlours, this essay is for you. At the heart of this piece is a feminist curiosity around what women were doing, gazing at and blushing about during the heyday of video films.
Legal sanctions permit little, if any, breathing room for queer intimacies. And yet, such experiences of desire survive in silos, real-world or digital. Cybercafes, anonymous chat rooms, and dimly-lit apartments are all witness to the loneliness epidemic — exacerbated all the more for queer folks despite recent protections.
As a group of girls and a young activist refuse to bow down to upper-caste bullies, the entire village stands witness to a confrontation between play and patriarchy. In this essay, Tanmay paints the picture of rural Bihar and narrates the consequences of joy (and a frisbee) finding itself in the wrong hands.
