Paper short abstract:

Mahasweta Devi's literary work situates a productive negotiation between historical-social reality and challenging representative strategies. Focussing on her novels and short stories, this paper attempts to read this negotiation through the analytical lens of 'peripheral realism.'

Paper long abstract:

Mahasweta Devi's literary writing prominently stages the interplay between state machineries of exploitation and adivasi (tribal) forms of resistance. These machineries range from resource extraction (minerals and commercially profitable forest products), deforestation to systematic exploitation of the adivasis: conversion to Christianity and Hinduism, money-lending and long term bonded labour, caste violence etc. Mahasweta's writing does not sentimentalize the case; it rather gives us a narration constituted of description, analysis, commentary and a highly complex narratorial investment in the irreal-supernatural that situate in them possible forms of adivasi resistance. This paper attempts to read this "mode" of documentation. It argues that this mode negotiates excellently between tribal "faith" in the "irreal" and a dispassionate judgement of the social-real, and produces a realism that is both historically aware of and sensitive to the peripheral forms of living and belief. The paper brings here the concept of peripheral realism, where periphery stands for the productive domain of the interface between the politics of the mainstream or core and the forms of living "coeval" with it. Taking from Fredric Jameson, Benita Parry, Rashmi Varma and the recent studies in Adivasi resistance, and focussing on Mahasweta's novels and short stories, the paper picks up certain features, state welfare, nationalist discourses, scientific research, adivasi "silence," religiosity, and the moment of the grotesque to situate the concept of peripheral realism which, it informs, can help meaningfully engage with the narrative complexities and ethical imperatives in Mahasweta and many of her peers.