To sit, to pee, to sleep, to protest

Scenes of work in contemporary Kerala

Bibliographic Data

ID7514368
AuthorsNavaneetha Mokkil (Jawaharlal Nehru University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume10
Issue1
Pages29
Publication date2026-03-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Encounters A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2468-4414 • E-ISSN: 2468-4414
PublisherLectito Publications (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.20897/femenc/18029
OpenAlexW7133202012
LanguageEN
References cited23

This paper explores mediated scenes of feminine bodies at work in contemporary Kerala, a state in Southern India. It demonstrates that regional cinematic practices, embedded in the changing media ecologies of the 21st century, have the potential to inject critical energies into the global discourse of feminism by prising open registers of the body. The key site of analysis in this paper is the film Asanghaditar (The Unorganized, 2022), directed by Kunjila Mascillamani, that recreates a protest for toilets lead by unorganised women workers. Asanghaditar traces how feminine bodies, often caught within the sticky meshes of shame, slip out and interrupt this enfolding. The paper examines the aesthetic practices of the film and its linkages to the tactical and tactile workings of digital media forms and embodied protests by marginalised women workers. Through a focus on sensory encounters generated by this film, the paper analyses how regional cinematic practices disrupt the framework of sexualization—the dual paradigms of sexual violence and desire—that often dominates the figuration of woman/women in national and global discourses on gender

Digital media · Embodied cognition · Feminism · Focus (optics · Key (lock · Lived experience · Work (physics · Emotional Labor in Professions · Social and Economic Development in India · South Asian Cinema and Culture

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