What Happens When Desire Refuses to Behave? | Professor Madhavi Menon | Ep 297 | The Mohua Show

What happens when desire refuses to behave? What happens when literature unsettles law, queerness challenges our ideas of identity, and the past refuses to stay neatly in the past?

In this thought-provoking episode of The Mohua Show, Mohua sits down with Professor Madhavi Menon, Professor of English at Ashoka University and author of The Law of Desire and Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India, to explore desire, sexuality, queerness, literature, law, language, and power.

From Shakespeare and queer theory to Indian courtrooms and Section 377, Professor Madhavi Menon unpacks why desire is so difficult to define and why societies constantly try to make it legible, respectable, and controllable.

The conversation also questions the idea that the past was sexually simpler than the present. Professor Madhavi Menon explores how fantasies about a “simpler time” are created, why they become powerful tools of social control, and what happens when we impose modern labels and terminology on histories and cultures that don’t fit neatly into them.

The episode also dives into the relationship between law and literature, particularly through the history of Section 377 in India. Professor Madhavi Menon discusses how laws that claim to have the final word can themselves be open to interpretation, and why the language used to understand sexuality and desire matters.

The conversation further explores the changing visibility of queerness in popular culture, the tension between identity and surveillance, and whether giving desire a name can sometimes make it easier to discipline.

Towards the end, the conversation turns to younger generations, relationships, situationships, emotional vulnerability, and the fear of failure. Professor Madhavi Menon shares her observations from the classroom and reflects on why young people may not necessarily be more liberated, but instead may be navigating new forms of pressure and fragility.

If you’re curious about desire, queerness, sexuality, literature, law, relationships, identity, or the ways society shapes how we understand ourselves, this episode is for you.