scholarly journals “Depressed Sufferings”: Reading Dalit Life-Writings as Testimonies of Collective Resistance

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 36-50
Author(s):  
Paulomi Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Indian Society ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Women Authors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Resistance ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Life Writings

Dalit life-writings have often been identified as reified spaces of protest against the Brahmanic oppression continuing since centuries in the Indian society. Banished to a space of invisibility, both metaphorical as well as physical margins of the Social Imaginary, Dalits continue to push back boundaries by transforming the ‘marginal’ space into a space of ‘subaltern resistance’. My aim in this paper is to interrogate the methods of collective resistance in the life-writings of Dalit women authors and show how the peripheral spatial geography becomes the central site of resistance. Both Baby Kamble’s The Prisons we Broke (2008), and Bama’s Karukku (1992) belong to entirely different historical periods, and therefore, inevitably differ in their plot-narratives and manner of expression. However, they converge in their emphasis on how the Dalit segregated spaces in their village assume an important role in awakening their collective consciousness first – as members of a community, and second – as women.

Metaphors of Conquest: Towards the Aesthetics of Dalit Feminism through Select Texts and Contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-83
Author(s):  
Jaydeep Sarangi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Society ◽  
Social Oppression ◽  
Disadvantaged Populations ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
Caste Politics ◽  
Class Distinction ◽  
Social Machine

One of the aims of writing dalit literature in India has been to reveal to the readers the injustice, oppression, helplessness and struggles of many of the disadvantaged populations under the social machine of stratification in India. Caste politics in India is unique and culture specific. Dalit feminism is unique in Indian context. The stratified Indian society beguiles the dalit women to the whirlpool of social oppression and exploitation. It is against any sort of class distinction. Conceiving the ideology of Dr B. R. Ambedkar: ‘Educate, agitate, organize’ dalit women write back.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: A Socio –Political Study of Poverty and Injustice

IJOHMN ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
RASHMI Ahlawat
Keyword(s):  
Indian Society ◽  
Poor People ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
White Tiger

Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize winning debut novel The White Tiger is sharp, fascinating, attacks poverty and injustice. The White Tiger is a ground breaking Indian novel. Aravind Adiga speaks of suppression and exploitation of various sections of Indian society. Mainly a story of Balram, a young boy’s journey from  rags to riches, Darkness to Light transforming from a village teashop boy into a Bangalore entrepreneur. This paper deals with poverty and injustice. The paper analyses Balram’s capability to overcome the adversities and cruel realities. The pathetic condition of poor people try to make both ends meet. The novel mirrors the lives of  poor in a realistic mode. The White Tiger is a story about a man’s journey for freedom. The protagonist   Balram in this novel is a victim of injustice, inequality and poverty. He worked hard inspite   of his low caste and overcame the social hindrance and become a successful entrepreneur. Through this novel Adiga portrays realistic and painful image of modern India. The novel exposes the anxieties of the oppressed.

Position Of Women In India: Historical Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Dr.S.Theresammal
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
High Position ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women In India

Woman establishes the strategicpart in the Indian society. Women in ancient India relished high position in society and their situation was worthy.The country is to study the position of its women. In certainty, the position of women represents the customary of values of any period. The social position of the women of a nation represents the social essence of the era. Though to appeal an assumption about the position of women is a problematic and difficult delinquent. It is consequently, essential to touch this situation in the historical perspective.The paper will help us to imagine the position of women in the historical perspective.

Body and Gender within the Stratifications of the Social Imaginary

Hypatia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-118
Author(s):  
Alice Pechriggl
Keyword(s):  
Social Imaginary ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

Victor S. D'Souza. Development Planning and Structural Inequalities: The Response of the Underprivileged. New Delhi: Sage Publications 1990. Pages 206 + Index. Price: Rs 180 (Hardbound).

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-317
Author(s):  
Ziaul Haque
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Capital Formation ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
The Social

Deveiopment planning in India, as in other developing countries, has generally been aimed at fostering an industrially-oriented policy as the engine of economic growth. This one-sided economic development, which results in capital formation, creation of urban elites, and underprivileged social classes of a modern society, has led to distortions in the social structure as a whole. On the contrary, as a result of this uneven economic development, which is narrowly measured in terms of economic growth and capital formation, the fruits of development have gone to the people according to their economic power and position in the social structure: those occupying higher positions benefiting much more than those occupying the lower ones. Thus, development planning has tended to increase inequalities and has sharpened divisive tendencies. Victor S. D'Souza, an eminent Indian sociologist, utilizing the Indian census data of 1961, 1971, and 1981, examines the problem of structural inequality with particular reference to the Indian Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes - the two most underprivileged sections of the present Indian society which, according to the census of 1981, comprised 15.75 percent and 7.76 percent of India's population respectively. Theoretically, he takes the concept of development in a broad sense as related to the self-fulfIlment of the individual. The transformation of the unjust social structure, the levelling down of glaring economic and social inequalities, and the concern for the development of the underprivileged are for the author the basic elements of a planned development. This is the theoretical perspective of the first chapter, "Development Planning and Social Transformation".

Unmaking and Remaking the World in Long-Term Solitary Confinement

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Lisa Guenther
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
State Prison ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Collective Resistance ◽  
Civil Death

In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry analyzes the structure of torture as an unmaking of the world in which the tools that ought to support a person’s embodied capacities are used as weapons to break them down. The Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison functions as a weaponized architecture of torture in precisely this sense; but in recent years, prisoners in the Pelican Bay Short Corridor have re-purposed this weaponized architecture as a tool for remaking the world through collective resistance. This resistance took the form of a hunger strike in which prisoners exposed themselves to the possibility of biological death in order to contest the social and civil death of solitary confinement. By collectively refusing food, and by articulating the meaning and motivation of this refusal in articles, interviews, artwork, and legal documents, prisoners reclaimed and expanded their perceptual, cognitive, and expressive capacities for world-making, even in a space of systematic torture.

Commentary

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy J. Miller ◽  
Grace E. Cho
Keyword(s):  
Self Esteem ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
Personal Meanings ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences

Chapter 12, “Commentary: Personalization,” discusses the process of personalization, based on the portraits presented in Chapters 8–11. Personalization is not just a matter of individual variation; it is a form of active engagement through which individuals endow imaginaries with personal meanings and refract the imaginary through their own experiences. The portraits illustrate how the social imaginary of childrearing and self-esteem entered into dialogue with the complex realities of people’s lives. Parents’ ability to implement their childrearing goals was constrained and enabled by their past experiences and by socioeconomic conditions. The individual children were developing different strategies of self-evaluation, different expectations about how affirming the world would be, and different self-defining interests, and their self-making varied, depending on the situation. Some children received diagnoses of low self-esteem as early as preschool.

Child-Affirming Artifacts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy J. Miller ◽  
Grace E. Cho
Keyword(s):  
Self Esteem ◽  
Consumer Products ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
The Social ◽  
Children’S Homes ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Vygotskian Theory ◽  
Electronic Games ◽  
Inherent Worth

Chapter 7, “Child-Affirming Artifacts,” uses ideas from Vygotskian theory to describe the child-affirming artifacts that populated children’s homes. Some artifacts were widely distributed consumer products. Children interacted with toys and electronic games that dispensed praise. Children’s books and TV shows, marketed as promoting children’s self-esteem, featured characters who were celebrated for their achievements, individuality, inherent worth, and potential. Several children loved Blue’s Clues, a show whose star constantly praised its characters and audience. These consumer products instantiated the same self-enhancing practices that parents believed fostered children’s self-esteem, thereby amplifying the social imaginary. This chapter also describes personalized, handmade artifacts designed by the families to celebrate their children. Photos of the children and artwork by children were on display in every household, and some adults created original homages to their children, which prompted commentary and stories that extolled the children’s achievements and reminded them how much they were loved and cherished.

All Aboard the Louis Vuitton Train!

Pólemos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-195
Author(s):  
Leif Dahlberg
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
The Social ◽  
Continuous Running

Abstract The article discusses fashion advertising as a means to access and understand contemporary social imaginary significations of the body politic, focusing on an advertising for Louis Vuitton. The article suggest that one can read advertising as a form of continuous, running commentary that society makes of itself, and through which one can unearth the social imaginary. The article finds a plethora of meanings in the selected advertising for Louis Vuitton, but the central finding is that the fashion advertising represents community as an absence of community; in other words as a deficit that the brand somehow is able to rectify.

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