Demeaned subjects, fragmented objects and the state in Hindi crime-porn magazines

This article addresses Hindi crime-porn magazines that are mostly distributed in makeshift stalls in cities and railway stations in Central and Northern India. This scene involves formal and informal layers, actors and writing styles, creating a series of disparities within and between literal and visual planes, and forming an apparatus within which, above all, state agents and signifiers are employed: policemen, the courts, legislation and political movements. Through a strategy that combines seduction and pedagogy, crime-porn magazines turn the reader/citizen into a demeaned subject. Moreover, the visual plane displays unstable and fragmented objects, in contrast to images of the state, which are emblazoned as a single signifier of authority and stability. Through a qualitative approach that combines ethnography and textual analysis addressing dominant narrative models, I analyse the aspiration to constitute ‘moral pornography’ and identify the pivots that shape and negotiate a regulated subjectivity under the authority of state signifiers.