Rao, Divya Ramakrishna (2019) New alphabet in sight: representation and the reframing of Dalit identity. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Dalit literature offers fertile grounds for testing the triumphs and shortcomings of postcolonial discourse in a twenty-first century that is well into its second decade. The Subaltern Studies Project, for instance, has both inspired and angered dalit scholars and activists. They have credibly argued that the subaltern historiographical project, in its inability to accommodate dalit voices and caste realities, has failed to conscientiously graft dalit history within its discourse. Nor has the subaltern project attentively addressed the figures and modes that implicate history in the strategies of caste power. Beyond such healthy critique of postcolonial debate, perhaps more crucially, the essentially anti-casteist nature of dalit discourse and scholarship offers a counter-hegemonic discourse that has a vital role to play in contesting the Hindutva populism currently gripping India today. Traditionally, it can be acknowledged, dalit literature has been a reductive representation of the dalit condition, limited largely to works of lament and victimhood—of ‘conventional victims’ of caste oppression. But with political reforms implemented to protect dalit interests since India’s independence, increase in transnational and global dalit activism and scholarship, and the theorisation of the dalit within academia, there is an urgent need to reframe dalit apperceptions within literature and the arts. My thesis attempts to execute such a reframing, through the lens of ‘representation’ in literature. While primarily a literary study, my ‘texts’ also include works in other media such as film, statues and sculpture, chromolithographs, and autoethnographic art works, where suitable for a comparative study.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DS Asia P Language and Literature > PK Indo-Iranian
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Dalits in literature, Dalits -- India -- Ethnic identity, Dalits -- India -- History, Dalits -- India -- Social aspects, Postcolonialism and the arts, Postcolonialism in literature
Official Date:	November 2019
Dates:	Date Event November 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Lazarus, Neil ; Varma, Rashmi
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	v, 276 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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