Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the social and semiotic processes involved in producing and performing Dalit art, especially dance-drumming. New meanings and modes of signification indicate changed social relationships, but ethnographic work reveals the relationship between Dalits and their 'art' as ambivalent.

Paper long abstract:

Performing art has an important role in Tamil Dalit activism. Public action of various kinds is invariably accompanied by Dalit 'art' (kalai), especially dance-drumming, on the stage, in liturgy, at rallies and processions, or as part of public protests or direct action. At one level these are performances which celebrate and honour Dalit identity, or are construed as 'weapons for liberation.' The force of such performances especially arises from the power of symbolic reversal, re-mythologising and performatively reinterpreting practices that formerly stood for and enacted subordination within village caste orders. Thus the drum is a transformative sign, theologised as a symbol of suffering and of emancipation. Dalit social recognition involves assembling semiotic elements (artefacts, music, dance, mythologies) in reconfigured settings — special events and new audiences — specifically so as to decontextualize them from relationships of subordination and thus produce Dalit culture and art.

The paper will argue that as 'art' these performances not only symbolise a break with the nexus of social relationships and ritual structure so as both to generate new meanings, but also show a changed semiotic process (from index to symbol, ritual-effect to interpreted meaning). However, the relationship between this art and activism is always uncertain. The tension is partly because Dalit 'art' is either insufficiently or excessively socially decontextualized: either retaining degrading identification with histories of subordination; or depoliticized as a stage performance. The paper explores ethnographically the complex and ambivalent relationship between Dalits (activists and villagers) and their art.