The libidinal economy of vernacularisation: modernity, sexuality and Bhojpuri media

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a notable proliferation of media industries producing low-budget digital films and music videos. These media industries routinely stage a confrontation between modernity and a fantasy of pure cultural traditions. The bulk of their content deploys the male star as an extraordinary crossover figure – the only one capable of bringing modernity and its vernacular outsides on the negotiating table. Drawing upon the trajectory of Bhojpuri media industry – referring to the language spoken in parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar – this paper discusses, via Bruno Latour, the fundamental discord at the heart of modernity. I argue that the libidinal economy has emerged as a narrative simplification of the purifying imperative of modernity, haunted as it is by the concurrent hybridizing force-field. © The Author(s) 2021.