Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Decolonize Drag

by Kareem Khubchandani
Save 50% Save 50%
Current price ₹974.00
Original price ₹1,956.00
Original price ₹1,956.00
Original price ₹1,956.00
(-50%)
₹974.00
Current price ₹974.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9781682193952
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: OR Books
  • Publisher Imprint: OR Books
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 224
  • Original Price: USD 19.95
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 212 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): Gender Studies, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, and LGBTQ+ Studies / General

Although imagined as a queer subcultural practice, drag seems to be everywhere we look: from AI filters on TikTok to brunchtime entertainment, from state legislations to political rallies. Yet as drag enters the mainstream--largely due to the intense, global popularity of reality TV competition RuPaul's Drag Race--some kinds of gender-based performance fall out of the purview of what we (could) call drag.


Decolonize Drag details the ways that gender is used as a form of colonial governance to eliminate various types of expression, and tracks how contemporary drag, including that on Drag Race, both replicates and disrupts these institutional hierarchies. This book focuses on several gender performers that resist and laugh at colonial projects through their aesthetic practices. It also features the voice of Khubchandani's drag alter ego, judgmental South Asian aunty LaWhore Vagistan. From the firsthand perspective of a drag artist, LaWhore describes encounters with depoliticized versions of drag that leave her disappointed and perplexed, and prompts Khubchandani for context and analysis.


Their dynamic sets the tone for the book, investigating how drag--and gender more broadly--has been privatized and delimited so that it's only available to certain people. Decolonize Drag argues for more abundance in and access to fashioning gender, and considers how drag changes meaning and efficacy as it shifts across geographies.

Kareem Khubchandani is an associate professor in the department of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife, co-editor of Queer Nightlife and editor of the TPQ special issue Critical Aunty Studies. His writing appears in Scholar and Feminist Online, Transgender Studies Quarterly, SAMAJ, South Asia, Journal of Asian American Studies, and the Velvet Light Trap. Khubchandani performs in drag as LaWhore Vagistan who interweaves storytelling, standup comedy, body art, theater, and digital media.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, academic and founding editor of Warscapes magazine. She is the author of Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital and a regular contributor to The Los Angeles Review of Books and Africa is a Country. She currently runs the Radical Books Collective which pushes for an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us