Abstract
The article focuses on the bio-moral politics of semen in India. By engaging with religious, ascetic, scientific, and medical discourses on semen in the context of India, it emphasises that semen and the regimes of its control were shaped by complex discourses on health, immortality, and modern politico-medical notions of immunity. Based on sociohistorical and ethnographic perspectives, the article is an exploration of the modern scientific turn to semen in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how the politics of Indian (Hindu) nationalism enmeshed science, morality, and politics into a biopolitics of semen control. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in the bayam samitis (traditional gymnasiums) and akharas (places of wrestling) of Kolkata, India, at present, I argue that the bio-moral politics of semen continues to remain entangled with the constitution of the virile and potent body of men and their national and community identities, sexuality, masculinity, health, and fitness with the help of songjom (self-restraint) exercised over masturbatory practices, diet, and night emissions. I conclude the article with the possibility to further think about the relation between the concepts of immortality and immunity that constitute masculine health based on the cultivation of a potent body through embodied practices of bayam (exercise), healthy diet, and semen control.
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Notes
According to J. Alter, the male body was perceived as having a strength and integrity that was supposedly threatened by the emergence of postcolonial desires. Brahmacharya, or more specifically, the control of semen, was conceptualised as a moral alternative that would seek to maintain the integrity of the body (Alter, 2011: 27).
I refer to the men in my research work as interlocutors instead of interviewees in order to understand my interactions with them through dialogue or conversation instead of interviewer-interviewee relation.
This edition of the periodical was published between April and May in the year 1885 titled “The Revival of National Physical Health” when the editor of Chikitsa Sammilani was Doctor Annadacharan Khastagir and Kaviraj Abinash Chandra Kabiratna. No further details were given by Bose.
Bose notes that the editor of Chikitsa Sammilani at that time was Abinashchandra Kaviratna. No further details were given by Bose.
No further details were given by Bose.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my interlocutors for their time and engagement. I express my gratitude to the organisers, Dr Ranjana Saha, Dr Jagriti Gangopadhyay, panelist Dr Ketaki Chowkhani, and participants of the conference at Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal, for the comments I received on an earlier draft of the paper presented there. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers, the editor/s of the journal, and my PhD supervisor, Prof. Piyali Sur. I am grateful to Dr. Ranjana Saha for her detailed comments and suggestions for the paper. I would finally thank Salini Saha for her suggestions on the initial draft of the paper.
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Saha, S. The Bio-moral Politics of Semen. Soc 61, 166–175 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00945-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00945-7