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Paper short abstract:

Relying on the poetics of performance and impression management through explorations of patterned behaviour, the paper investigates the contours of self by being the ‘other’ using the ethnography of everyday stories that partake in the reaffirmation of identity for Ahmadis in the social domain.

Paper long abstract:

In an ‘unwell’ environment, how do the disenfranchised communities claim their trauma and suffering without being shrouded with aspersions and defacement? By helping to constitute the social world, suffering entwines with the social and permeates the barrier of dichotomies existing through institutions and people who refuse to acknowledge these themes as essential denominators in understanding complex phenomena of everyday life.

The paper begins by discussing ‘performance’ as a social tool to understand the predicaments that the domain of suffering expresses but cannot communicate. It also prods us into thinking: Which form of suffering is granted acclamation, and how is it different from the suffering that remains unacknowledged? Phelan (1993) speaks about Identity as emerging in the failure of the body to express being fully and the failure of the signifier to convey meaning exactly. Taking cue from Phelan’s declaration of identity and identification, the paper engages with the everyday experiences of Ahmadi Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir (a persecuted community in Islam ostracised for their religious practices) and highlights the emergence of various creative agencies employed by the community members to sustain their identity. Relying on the poetics of performance and impression management through explorations of patterned behaviour, the paper makes a diligent effort to investigate the contours of self by being the ‘other’. Proposing possible areas of convergence between the interiority of the subjects and their sociality thus leads to yet another important exploration where identifying oneself and trying to find a familiar space in the vastness of their reduced individuality is a concurrent phenomenon. The relation between real and representational is redefined using the ethnographic vignettes of everyday stories that partake in the reaffirmation and shaping of identity for Ahmadis in the social domain. Thus, story narration becomes a means to generate visibility of the Ahmadi community that is otherwise unmarked and under-represented.