Dialectics and Caste

Rethinking Dalit Life-Writings in the Vernacular, Comparing Dalit Narratives

Bibliographic Data

ID8910463
AuthorsSreya Chatterjee (0009-0009-3640-4211, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume53
Issue2
Pages377-399
Publication date2016-08-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Literature Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4132 • E-ISSN: 1528-4212
PublisherThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/complitstudies.53.2.0377
OpenAlexW2511651034
LanguageEN
References cited13

Caste has emerged as one of contemporary India's most explosive issues, with the advent of majoritarian nationalism along with neoliberal globalization. While Indian English writing with its focus on the middle-class, upper-caste citizen-subject has garnered substantial attention in the global literary market, Dalit literature, especially in the vernacular languages has remained in the shadows. The representation of “personhood” in Dalit “life-writing” offers an effective counterpoint to dominant Anglophone or postcolonial cultural production. I explore Marathi writer Laxman Gaikwad's Uchlaya (1987) (The Branded [1998]) and the more recently published Manoranjan Byapari's Bengali-language Itibritte Chandal Jiban (2013) (History of a Corpse-Handler's Life) as narratives of Dalit self-articulation that mount a formal and thematic critique of nationalist culture and its male, upper-caste, normative subject

Art · Caste · Indian English · Literature · Marathi · Narrative · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vernacular · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

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