scholarly journals Transformation From Aesthetics to Activism: An Analysis of Select Dalit Women Personal Narratives

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110389
Author(s):  
Surya Simon
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dalit Women

Dalit resistance gained prominence in postcolonial India through Dalit literature, with Dalit life writing emerging as a significant way to address ongoing problems and issues faced by Dalit communities. Dalit personal narratives are not mere reflections into the past but lived experiences with a timely and current sociological base. Dalit narratives have become a platform for social and political activism against various hegemonic discourses that otherwise exclude the experiences of the Dalit population. Moreover, Dalit women suffer many layers of oppression and violence, and there is a necessity to understand the intersectionality of Dalit women’s realities. Hence this article analyses select personal narratives of two Dalit women writers: P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change ([1989] 2006) and ₹Author’s Notes: Gowri’ ([1999] 2006); and Bama’s Karukku ([1992] 2005). The ₹Author’s Notes: Gowri’ is a reflection on The Grip of Change and the two narratives are collectively referred to as The Grip of Change. This article attempts to understand the extent to which Dalit personal narratives transform from aesthetics to activism. This article analyses the narrative technique and form used in the narratives and explores how the narratives expose embodied issues to foster activism in and through the content.

scholarly journals Dileanation And A Role Of Mainstream To Dalit Feminism

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1619-1627
Author(s):  
Swapna Emmadi , Et. al.
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Feminist Standpoint ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Dalit Women

Dalit women have long occupied marginal positions and been excluded from two major Indian social movements: The Feminist Movement and the Dalit Movement. The researcher examines how Dalit women have made creative use of their marginality—their ‘outsider-within' status—and have represented their lived experiences. The study scrutinizes select life narratives of Dalit women writers: Bama's Sangati: Events (2005), Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life (2015), and Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke (2008) to discuss and explore the sociological significance of three characteristic themes in these narratives: (1) the interlocking nature of Dalitwomen’s oppression, (2) endurance and resilience, (3) their role in the transformation of the Dalit community. Thus, the perspectives of Dalit women writers create new knowledge about their lives, families, and communities. Their perspectives may well provide a preparatory point for the development of the Dalit Feminist Standpoint.  

scholarly journals Spotlight on the traveller: Individual experiences of routine journeys

2022 ◽  
pp. 002252662110637
Author(s):  
Colin Pooley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
The Past

All travel generates a range of feelings, responses and emotions that can be stimulated by many factors but recovering such responses to everyday travel in the past is difficult. Few conventional sources provide information on the travellers’ experiences of movement and, not surprisingly, most transport histories focus mainly on matters of infrastructure, usage, and technological change. In contrast, contemporary mobilities studies that can talk directly to those who travel do explore the lived experiences of mobility in some detail. This paper shows how, by using a range of life writing drawn from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, it is possible to begin to recover at least some of the feelings and responses that past travellers experienced. I argue that such an approach provides an important additional perspective to research in transport history.

scholarly journals Between field and home: notes from the balcony

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110205
Author(s):  
Shruti Ragavan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Dairy Farms ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Village ◽  
The City

Balconies, windows and terraces have come to be identified as spaces with newfound meaning over the past year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and concomitant lockdowns. There was not only a marked increase in the use of these spaces, but more importantly a difference in the very nature of this use since March 2020. It is keeping this latter point in mind, that I make an attempt to understand the spatial mobilities afforded by the balcony in the area of ethnographic research. The street overlooking my balcony, situated amidst an urban village in the city of Delhi – one of my field sites, is composed of middle and lower-middle class residents, dairy farms and farmers, bovines and other nonhumans. In this note, through ethnographic observations, I reflect upon the balcony as constituting that liminal space between ‘field’ and ‘home’, as well as, as a spatial framing device which conditions and affects our observations and interactions. This is explored by examining two elements – the gendered nature of the space, and the notion of ‘distance and proximity’, through personal narratives of engaging-with the field, and subjects-objects of study in the city.

Narrative Continuity/Rupture: Projected Professional Futures amid Pervasive Employment Precarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 073088842110282
Author(s):  
Elena Ayala-Hurtado
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
University Graduates ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
Future Projections ◽  
Cultural Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Stable Employment ◽  
Past Conditions

As working conditions change worldwide, employment precarity is increasing, including for groups for whom such conditions are unexpected. This study investigates how members of one such group—educationally advantaged young adults—describe their professional futures in a context of unprecedented employment precarity where their expected trajectories are no longer easily achievable. Using 75 interviews with young university graduates in Madrid, Spain, I find that most young graduates drew on a long-standing cultural narrative, which I call the “achievement narrative,” to imagine future stable employment. Simultaneously, most denounced this narrative as fraudulent. To explain this finding, I draw on the concept of hysteresis: the mismatch between beliefs that are dependent on the past conditions that produced them and the available opportunities in the present. I argue that hysteresis can extend into future projections; projected futures can be guided by beliefs based on past conditions more than by lived experiences in the present. Further, I argue that the achievement narrative itself reinforces hysteresis in future projections due to its resonance and institutional support. The paper offers new insights into projected futures and employment precarity by analyzing the future projections of a privileged cohort facing unexpected precarity, further develops the concept of hysteresis, and extends the study of cultural narratives.

scholarly journals Transdiagnostic or Disorder Specific? Indicators of Substance and Behavioral Addictions Nominated by People with Lived Experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyoun S. Kim ◽  
David C. Hodgins ◽  
Benjamin Kim ◽  
T. Cameron Wild
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Behavioral Addictions ◽  
Addictive Behaviors ◽  
Canadian Province ◽  
The Past ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
Prevention And Treatment ◽  
Qualitative Responses

Using a transdiagnostic perspective, the present research examined the prominent indicators of substance (alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, tobacco) and behavioral (gambling, video games, sex, shopping, work, eating) addictions nominated by people with lived experiences. Specifically, we aimed to explore whether the perceived most important indicators nominated were consistent across the 10 addictions or differed based on the specific addiction. Additionally, we explored gender differences in the perceived most important indicators across addictive behaviors. A large online sample of adults recruited from a Canadian province (n = 3503) were asked to describe the most important signs or symptoms of problems with these substances and behaviors. Open-ended responses were analyzed among a subsample of 2603 respondents (n = 1562 in the past year) who disclosed that they had personally experienced a problem with at least one addiction listed above. Content analyses revealed that dependence (e.g., craving, impairments in control) and patterns of use (e.g., frequency) were the most commonly perceived indicators for both substance and behavioral addictions, accounting for over half of all the qualitative responses. Differences were also found between substance and behavioral addictions regarding the proportion of the most important signs nominated. Consistent with the syndrome model of addiction, unique indicators were also found for specific addictive behaviors, with the greatest proportion of unique indicators found for eating. Supplemental analyses found that perceived indicators across addictions were generally gender invariant. Results provide some support for a transdiagnostic conceptualization of substance and behavioral addictions. Implications for the study, prevention, and treatment of addictions are discussed.

Biography and Autobiography

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Laura Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Jacob's Room

This chapter explores the centrality of biography and autobiography to Woolf’s reading and writing life, and to her cultural milieu, in which experiments in life-writing were a crucial aspect of the modernist reaction against the Victorian era. It examines Woolf’s deep engagement in her fiction with life-writing forms, from the bildungsroman of The Voyage Out to the play with conventional biographical forms of Jacob’s Room, Orlando, The Waves, and Flush and the autobiographical foundations of To the Lighthouse. It also examines her biography of Roger Fry, and her own experiment in memoir-writing, the posthumously published ‘A Sketch of the Past’, in the context of concerns with the nature of memory, identity, and sexuality.

Mothering from a Distance: The Lived Experiences of Filipina Transnational Mothers in Singapore

2021 ◽  
pp. 106648072110618
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Ballaret ◽  
Jonel P. Lanada
Keyword(s):  
Labor Migration ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Positive Thinking ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Virtual Communication ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Family ◽  
Transnational Mothers

Transnational motherhood continues to grow among Filipina mothers. It resulted in economic prosperity and quality of life of Filipino families but caused family pressures within the sphere of motherhood. This qualitative study is grounded through the philosophical lens of phenomenology aimed to explore the lived experiences of transnational mothers. It seeks to understand their life history, present experiences that redefined their motherhood, and reflections of the future. The lived experiences of transnational mothers began with the experience of the personal and structural dimensions of poverty in the past. Their decision to embark on labor migration was primarily instrumental to alleviate their life condition. However, mothering from a distance has ensued emotional, social, and psychological strains. To cope with the situation, they observed four central coping ways: the role of faith and prayer; the repression of emotional strains through work and friends; focus and positive thinking; and the rationalization of distance by way of regular virtual communication and remittances. The hopes of transnational mothers revealed their yearning for family reunification predicated on improving their family life through financial security, savings, and children's education. This intersection between motherhood and labor migration has therefore created new family forms, structures, roles, meaning, and expectations.

Deliberation, demobilization, and limited empowerment: a survey study on participatory pricing in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 694-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuan Qin ◽  
Baogang He
Keyword(s):  
Negative Impact ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Low Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Negative Impact

AbstractAuthoritarian deliberation has been used widely to describe the specific form of deliberation developed in China. However, whether its practice will strengthen authoritarianism or lead to democratization remains unknown. In this study, we examine this question from the perspective of participants in public deliberation. Surveying the participants in participatory pricings held in Shanghai over the past 5 years, we find that participants’ perception of deliberative quality has a statistically significant negative impact on their level of political activism, while their level of empowerment has a moderating effect on this negative relationship. In this light, Chinese deliberative practices characterized by high-quality deliberation and low-level empowerment are likely to have a demobilization effect; thus, they reinforce the authoritarian rules.

scholarly journals Online Life Writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-150
Author(s):  
Silvia Schultermandl
Keyword(s):  
Life Style ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Online Media ◽  
The Past ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Literary Market ◽  
Do So

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of this contribution to this forum: The advent of Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, Instagram and Pinterest in 2010, and Snapchat and Google+ in 2011 facilitated the emergence of “everyday” autobiographies out of keeping with memoir practices of the past.[1] These “quick media” enable constant, instantaneous, and seemingly organic expressions of everyday lives.[2] To read quick media as “autobiographical acts” allows us to analyze how people mobilize online media as representations of their lives and the lives of others.[3] They do so through a wide range of topics including YouTube testimonials posted by asylum seekers (Whitlock 2015) and the life-style oriented content on Pinterest.[4] To be sure, the political content of these different quick media life writing varies greatly. Nevertheless, in line with the feminist credo that the personal is political, these expressions of selfhood are indicative of specific societal and political contexts and thus contribute to the memoir boom long noticed on the literary market.[5]

scholarly journals Hunting Captain Henley: Finding Fascism in the Reflective Voice

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. C1-C20
Author(s):  
Kenneth Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Standard English ◽  
British Army ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Literary Structure

This paper explores how a reflective analysis of the literary structure of one’s own life writing can often lead to an exceptional intellectual discovery. The paper focuses on a particular narrative technique that developed during a journalistic investigation into the whereabouts of an English Army Captain who had allegedly bullied my dad in the British Army. Examples are drawn from a range of literary theorists and from the author’s own prose and critical evaluation. It is argued that the occupation of one language by another can generate a form of linguistic hyper-energy and from it the birth of what is described as Scotland’s Fascist Voice. Scots dialect’s uneasy alliance with Standard English in turn highlights Caledonian Antisyzygy, a term first coined by Gregory Smith in Scottish Literature: Character and Influence to spotlight the zigzag of contradictions at the heart of Scottish writing. The overall aim of the paper is to reveal a strong interdependence between literary theory and life writing.The subtext concludes that in isolation each offers restricted forms of expression, yet when blended can exhibit an independent intelligence free from the shackles of both conventional autobiography and traditional academic enquiry.

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