Disciplinary power and practices of body politics: an evaluation of Dalit women in Bama’s Sangati and P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change through Foucauldian discourse analysis

Abstract

Through a Foucauldian reading of Bama’s Sangati (2005) and P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change (2006a, 2006b), this paper attempts to delineate the permeation and maintenance of disciplinary power in the social structure and assertion of patriarchal politics in the subjugation of Dalit female bodies. The detrimental politics of patriarchal discourse, the paper argues, degrades the existence of Dalit women, and excludes them from the equation of power relations by delimiting their access to society’s productive resources and restricting their sexuality. Disciplinary power, which acts as a patriarchal tool, prescribes acceptable gestures and required behaviour, and through constant surveillance normalizes a dominant male order. It reduces Dalit women’s existence into an amorphous property, readily mutilated and moulded under the whims of a phallocentric order. Discursive practices further constitute practices of body politics, making the female body an object of active site of political struggle. The paper studies Sangati and The Grip of Change as literary exemplars to demonstrate how disciplinary power, as underscored by Foucault’s discourse analysis, intervenes and determines the life of Dalit women. It not only lays bare the covert body politics of patriarchy with the unfiltered depiction of women’s exploitation and atrocities, but also represents a paradigm shift by advocating ways of emancipation for Dalit women.

Relasi Kuasa Atas Tubuh Perempuan dalam Film Imperfect (Kajian Semiotika Peirce)

“…Selanjutnya, pada Objektifikasi dan penghakiman terhadap Rara karena tubuhnya yang gemuk menunjukkan bagaimana standar kecantikan digunakan sebagai alat untuk mengontrol dan merendahkan perempuan bertubuh gemuk. Hal ini mencerminkan relasi kuasa patriarki yang melanggengkan ketidaksetaraan gender, di mana tubuh perempuan dipersepsikan sebagai objek yang dapat dihakimi dan diintervensi (Ghosh, 2021). Hal ini menciptakan tekanan yang luar biasa bagi perempuan untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan standar tersebut, dan mereka yang tidak memenuhinya seringkali dihakimi, diolok-olok, dan bahkan dikucilkan.…”

Towards Dalit Ecologies

“…A growing body of Dalit autobiographies and literary anthologies translated from the vernacular to English, including the dossiers edited by Susie Th aru and K. Satyanarayana (Th aru and Satyanarayana 2011;Satyanarayana andTh aru 2013a, 2013b), are also important for understanding Dalit ecological experiences. Dalit oral traditions and literary works are currently being examined for their implications for the history of social movements and resistance to gender, caste, and other hierarchies by scholars such as Mukul Chaturvedi (2020), Toral Gajarawala (2012, Aditya Ghosh (2021), Pavel Hons (2013, M. Kannan and François Gros (2002), Purnachandra Naik (2016), Badri Narayan (Narayan and Misra 2004;Narayan 2006), Anne Placid (2021, Anamika Purohit (2021), Sharmila Rege (2006), among many others. Ecology as a critical lens is yet to be fully deployed in such analyses, however.…”