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- Convenor:
-
Nicole Thiara
(Nottingham Trent University)
- Location:
- Room 212
- Start time:
- 28 July, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel proposes to discuss the representation of space in Dalit writing. To what extent are locations depicted as determined or produced by caste and to what extent do literary and film texts create narratives that interrogate and transgress spatial and caste boundaries?
Long Abstract:
This panel proposes to discuss the representation of space in Dalit writing. To what extent are locations depicted as determined or produced by caste and to what extent do literary and film texts create narratives that interrogate and transgress spatial and caste boundaries? We are particularly interested in papers that delineate the historical development of the representation of caste space in fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography, graphic novels and visual art produced by Dalits and non-Dalits. In this context, we invite papers that explore inter-connections with 1) environmental topics and ecocriticism, 2) gender, sexuality and gendered spaces, and 3) the South Asian diaspora, and particularly the issue of how caste travels or doesn't travel outside of India, through literature and other arts.
This panel is associated with the research network 'Writing, Analysing. Translating Dalit Literature' (http://pays-anglophones.upv.univ-montp3.fr/?page_id=996).
Beside a presentation by the convenors, the panellist Joshil K. Abraham, an early career scholar working as Assistant Professor at G B Pant Engineering College, IP University, Delhi, would present a paper on the representation of caste and space in film.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Runa Chakraborty (Salesian College)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to show how narratives depicting 'stigmatized' existence of Indian Dalits and Adivasis not only transgress spatial boundaries but create a discursive space for the Dominant and the Subaltern to interact and start a dialogue.
Paper long abstract:
Does one's social location shape one's identity? This paper based on references drawn from "Chandalika"- a Bengali dance-drama written by Rabindranath Tagore and the news articles on Chuni Kotal- a Bengali Adivasi woman who allegedly committed suicide during the 1990s as a result of continuous mistreatment from her upper-caste university professor, reveals how the voices arising from spaces 'stigmatized' by the notion of pollution can create a new discursive space for not only challenging the hegemony but also, more importantly, for starting a dialogue between the 'Centre' and the "Margin." The ulterior purpose of this paper is to underscore the significance of building the new intellectual space which can bring changes to the exiting power dynamics by transgressing territories and by compelling the dominant discourse to recognize the assertion of new identities.
Daniel Bilton (Nottingham Trent University )
Paper short abstract:
This paper will attempt to forge links between space and trauma as presented within Dalit literature. Are there specific kinds of trauma presented in Dalit texts that happen in specific spaces? If so, why does this happen, and what critical links can we draw from these relationships?
Paper long abstract:
This paper will attempt to forge links between space and trauma as presented within Dalit literature. With trauma being an under researched area in regards to Dalit literature, an important part of the research process must focus on the relationships between various kinds of traumatic experience and space. Are there specific kinds of trauma presented in Dalit texts that happen in specific spaces? What is the importance of these spaces in regards to caste based oppression? Are trauma/space pairings consistent throughout genres of Dalit literature? This paper attempts to answer these questions through the analysis of both Dalit life narratives and fiction. By doing this, we are able to see how important these relationships are, as they are included within fictional texts, which highlights how central to Dalit life they are. The main focus of this paper will be how trauma is presented in public spaces and will highlight certain areas such as main streets and schools as sources of specific kinds of traumatic experience which affect certain people in the community. Examples of trauma which occur in public spaces are therefore able to be analysed alongside instances of traumatic experience away from these spaces which, although are less common, are still just as traumatic. Once these trauma/space pairings have been outlined, it will show how they are able to sit in dialogue with other research areas such as concepts of humiliation and Dalit feminism.
Ruchika Bhatia (Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi) Devika Mehra (Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses how caste/gendered spaces are renegotiated in A Gardener in the Wasteland: Jotiba Phule's Fight for Liberty to understand how visual narratives that describe oppression based on caste and gender succeed by reworking (mythic/mundane) images they want to challenge.
Paper long abstract:
A Gardener in the Wasteland: Jotiba Phule's Fight for Liberty (2011) by Srividya Natrajan (writer) and Aparajita Ninan (illustrator) is a work where the writer and illustrator together work to create a visual narrative that subverts and resists existing stereotypes or past narratives. Fusing both past and present, both, temporally and spatially they highlight the pervasive issue of caste in contemporary society. In our paper we make a study of three different spaces where workings of caste and gender can be examined: creative space of two women storytellers (writer/illustrator) telling their version (of story), within a textual space that delineates caste issues along with woman's question, and the space of meta-narratives (cultural dictates, and graphic novel contained by its own limiting sub-culture) that re-impose constraints. How does gendering of caste spaces function within a textual space and outside? We want to study how much the narratives that describe oppression based on caste and gender succeed by reworking the (mythic/mundane) images they want to challenge. Since any representation is bound by the phallogo-centric discourse, is there is a possibility of reshaping the past narratives by revisiting them? If so, how does the text depict an urbane space (textual/temporal) as a prospect where caste infiltration can be seemingly innocuous yet predominant?
Nicole Thiara (Nottingham Trent University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will analyse the spatial politics of the representations of caste and untouchability in British Asian literature. How do diasporic texts represent domestic, religious, educational and public spaces as touched by caste politics or as free from all or certain elements of caste?
Paper long abstract:
This paper will analyse the spatial politics of the representations of caste and untouchability in British Asian literature. Very few diasporic texts have been published that explore the significance of caste and caste discrimination in the UK and the few that do so have been produced in the last 15 years; this paper will examine why so few published texts engage with the representation and politics of caste and why there appears to be a recent trend to address caste and untouchability to a slightly greater extent. How do diasporic texts represent domestic, religious, educational and public spaces as touched by caste politics or as free from all or certain elements of caste? How does the diasporic situation influence and re-position the way in which caste and caste discrimination is depicted in literary texts in comparison to the way in which caste is portrayed in Indian literature? To what extent do the texts' intended audiences shape the way in which the spatial politics of caste are represented? Do the texts draw on the Indian tradition of Dalit writing, either implicitly or explicitly? The texts that will be explored in this paper are produced by writers of different caste backgrounds and most of texts are published but some of them are unpublished; the writers discussed include Rena Dipti Annobil, Balvinder Banga, Kavita Bhanot, Reena Jaisiah, Daljit Khankhana, Daljinder Nagra, Bali Rai and Sathnam Sanghera.
Murali Krishna (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad)
Paper short abstract:
Through a study of dalit autobiographies and fact-finding reports in the aftermath of atrocities against dalits, my paper critically reflects on the implications of the socio-cultural organisation of space and its administration for dalit liberation and equality.
Paper long abstract:
One of the most striking features of dalit autobiography is the way in which caste gets foregrounded in the unfolding of events in dalits' pursuit of equality and self-respect in the modern democratic India. The title of Siddalingaiah's autobiography, Ooru Keri -which means village and colony—is significant in terms of understanding the spatial divide between the dalit street and the village and stigma attached with the dalit colony. Siddalingaiah 's recounting of incidents of hunger, poverty, labour, sex and untouchability explodes the category of caste.
Dalit autobiographies represent intersecting accounts of life in villages and urban spaces where dalit aspiration for freedom and dignity clash with the hegemonic caste morality. Drawing on W. E. B. Du Bois' concept of double consciousness, I discuss the interplay of socio-cultural meanings of space in Indian villages to understand how caste perpetuates and reifies socio-economic inequalities. Dalits' attitude towards dominant castes has undergone a tremendous change after 1970s and 80s, the decades in which the first generation of educated dalits, having come into contact with various philosophies of liberation, began to challenge the brahmanical caste morality in village economy. As a result dalits embodied a strange mix of defiance in obedience when they came into contact with the dominant caste people. Such a change in dalit attitude, however, was not without serious implications.
Through a study of dalit autobiographies and fact-finding reports, my paper critically reflects on the implications of the socio-cultural organisation of space and its administration for dalit liberation and equality.
Aparajita De (University of Delhi) Rajib Nandi (Institute of Social Studies Trust)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores how contemporary Rajbanshi writers are re-writing the life of Panchanan Barma simultaneously memorializing the struggles of the Rajbanshis offering resistance to the dominant constructions of history and identity of the community, who live at the spatial margins of greater Bengal.
Paper long abstract:
Thakur Panchanan Barma, was a Rajbanshi Dalit leader and a social reformer from Cooch Behar, an erstwhile princely state in North Bengal. In the early twentieth century he spearheaded one of the largest social movements of Bengal - Rajbanshi Kshatriyazation movement. The kshatriyazation movement amongst the Rajbanshis in the early 20th Century consolidated around two issues: one to gain respect and acceptance by the upper caste Bengalis and second to break away from the Koch affiliation of the Rajbanshis and establish a kshatriya identity by rewriting Rajbanshi history.
Today the Rajbanshis are reclaiming North Bengal by demanding separate statehood and through the Kamtapur movement they are not only fighting for greater social, political and territorial authority but are simultaneously re-crafting a new past, a new space and an identity that blends colonial documentations with their own reconstructed histories and mythographies. It is in this context that our paper attempts to understand how contemporary Rajbanshi local writers are writing and re-writing the life of Thakur Panchanan Barma simultaneously memorializing the long, ongoing struggles of the Rajbanshi community, particularly their history of being marginalized. We also argue how the writing of the biography of Thakur Panchanan Barma offers a counter-narrative of the Rajbanshi community spoken in the voice of the community itself, that reiterates and lays claim to a space and a past that is not only lost but is erased from a dominantly Bengali, Calcutta-centric versions of North Bengal.
Abu Saleh (University of Hyderabad)
Paper short abstract:
City has always been a contested place where hierarchy plays crucial role in social subjugation and category creation. It maintains class and binaries. If we look into some city and its narrative then we find that how the notion of lower class body has been imagined.
Paper long abstract:
City has always been a contested place where space management is hierarchical and plays crucial role in social subjugation and category creation. It maintains class and binaries. If we look into some city and its narrative then we find that how the notion of lower class body has been imagined and created. Like the poems of Namdev Dhasal talks from the scam of Earth and regarding the real untouchables, voice of the suppressed and oppressed. In Golpitha (1972), he writes about the red light aria of Mumbai and speaks about the Low Class working people, pimps, prostitutes and various other types of people. Namdeo is a poetic genius and works like Golpitha is his powerful masterpiece. He expressed his anger in explosive language against the system that made him and his people untouchable.
This splendorous city for which we gave blood.
And won in return the prerogative to eat stones.
We must this very moment put dynamite under its sky kissing buildings.
The paper attempts to study selected poetry of Namdeo Dhasal in English translation. In the larger context, it attempts to study how the body gets constructed in the poetry of Dhasal. Furthermore, it also attempts to look at other similar narratives of city space and Dalit body in presentation. It will analyse some selective writings and cinematic representation on the similar theme.