Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Muslim Relationships

In India Hindu-Muslim relatioships have had a history of coexistence and conflict. At various moments particular histories have emerged while others have remained in the shadows. Intimacy in Alienation explores the delicate relationship between the two communities through the lens of the intimate Hindu-Muslim couple. The author takes readers on an exploration of the psychological interiority of the couple compelling them to rethink the social and cultural phenomena implicit in words such as ‘otherness’ ‘identity’ and ‘desire’. Cloistered in the unconscious are the unspoken conflicts that exist between the two communities in these times. By creating psychobiographs based on extensive interviews and supported by literary sources and psychoanalytic theory Roy investigates what keeps a couple going and whether love is enough. In doing so the book creates a space for the meaning(s) the couple would like to give to their identity with or without religion. 'At this time of confusion and conflict around identity Roy takes the conversation to the intimate level of marriage giving us a window into the emotional level of identity beyond academia in the real world of family life.’–Dr Neil Altman Author of White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. ‘Ashis Roy’s finely nuanced psychoanalytic stories about how deeply the communal virus has infected contemporary India’s moral soul are a timely warning for everyone who is worried about identity politics and its pathologies.’–Prof Alok Bhalla Author of Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home