Local Subjections in My Story, Vidheyan, and the God of Small Things Priya Menon
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Fall 12-10-2010 Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections in my Story, Vidheyan, and the God of Small Things priya menon Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation menon, priya, "Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections in my Story, Vidheyan, and the God of Small Things." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2010. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/62 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LIMINAL RESISTANCES: LOCAL SUBJECTIONS IN MY STORY, VIDHEYAN, AND THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by PRIYA MENON Under the Direction of Dr. Ian Almond and Dr. Calvin Thomas ABSTRACT This project investigates various ways in which resistance is explored by Kamala Das, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Arundhati Roy in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things respec- tively. ―Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things‖ aims to examine the workings and creative subversions of hegemonic discourses of caste, class, gender and color within the local milieu of Kerala, India. By exploring the theoreti- cal apparatuses employed in three diverse texts set in Kerala, this project identifies: firstly, Das‘s subversion of Nair Kerala‘s sense of gendered and casted normativity in My Story; secondly, Adoor‘s depiction of the notion of home that enables self-recognition between the exploited and tyrant ensuring both suppression and libratory self-formation for classed subjects in Vidheyan; and finally, Roy‘s portrayal of the conceptual category of whiteness within Kerala as being nei- ther uniformly subservient nor stable as depicted in The God of Small Things. It is hoped that by identifying and exploring the theoretical nuances of resistances in these generically diverse texts—autobiography, film, and fiction-- all set within the local realms of Kerala, this project will contribute a new scholarship in postcolonial studies that will recognize and problematize local instances of subversions and their representations within the Indian subcontinent. INDEX WORDS: Kamala Das, Nair, Caste, My Story, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Vidheyan, Home, Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, Whiteness, Kerala, Resistance LIMINAL RESISTANCES: LOCAL SUBJECTIONS IN MY STORY, VIDHEYAN, AND THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by PRIYA MENON A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2010 Copyright by Priya Menon 2010 LIMINAL RESISTANCES: LOCAL SUBJECTIONS IN MY STORY, VIDHEYAN, AND THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by PRIYA MENON Committee Chairs: Ian Almond Calvin Thomas Committee: LeeAnne Richardson Renée Schatteman Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2010 DEDICATION For Mira and Govind vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dr. Ian Almond: for piquing my interest in things local; for giving me the confidence to choose Kerala as the subject of this study; for the constructive advice and interest; for your at- tention to my work; for arriving at GSU just in time. Dr. Calvin Thomas: for helping me find elegance in Theory; for those exceptional classroom lec- tures that continue to motivate me; for your patient yet rigorous commentary; for inspir- ing me with your brilliance and intellectual energy. Dr. LeeAnne Richardson: for prompting me to unearth my own voice; for trusting me with your colonialism/postcolonialism class in 2006; for your exact comments, constant generosity and valuable advice. I can only hope to be as bright and enthusiastic a teacher as you were to me. Dr. Renée Schatteman: for advising me about the mechanics of the dissertation process; for your encouraging comments; for your willingness to listen to my ideas and share your own; for Caryl Phillips. Dr. Jan Gabler-Hover: for teaching me to read anew; for feminisms. Dr. Chris Kocela: for initiating me to Whiteness Studies; for helping me untie Bhabha. Dr. William Thompson: for the job offer most English graduates dream about, for which I am thankful more than you know. Dr. Noel Harold Kaylor: for being my friend, philosopher and guide. And finally, but enormously, Dr. T.K. Nandakumar: for setting me off on this journey. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... vii CHAPTER ....................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................1 1.1 Why Kerala? ......................................................................................................5 1.2 Localizing Resistances: From Postcoloniality to Locality ................................. 11 1.3 Chapter Outline ................................................................................................ 19 2 Engendering Resistance: The Unethical and Unstable Subject of My Story .......... 24 2.1 Contextualizing My Story ................................................................................. 26 2.2 The Matrilineal Nairs of Kerala ........................................................................ 31 2.3 Das and Feminism ........................................................................................... 36 2.4 Moral Intersections of Patriarchy and Caste in My Story ................................... 41 2.5 Good Nair Women Never Mention Sex: Challenging the Ethical Nair Subject in My Story .......................................................................................................... 50 2.6 The Calculated Unreliability of Das‘s Autobiography ...................................... 60 2.7 Exploring the In-between: Husband as Villain(-)Lover ..................................... 62 2.8 Radha as a Trope of Resistance ........................................................................ 67 ix 3 Reserved Resistance: Home in Vidheyan .............................................................. 72 3.1 Vidheyan—a Synopisis ..................................................................................... 79 3.2 The Film vs. the Novella .................................................................................. 81 3.3 Patelars and Kudiyans of Dakshina Kannada .................................................... 86 3.4 Power and Subjectivity in Vidheyan ................................................................. 89 3.5 Unpacking Home in Vidheyan .......................................................................... 96 3.6 Class, Home, and the Patelar Kudiyan Dialectic in Vidheyan .......................... 103 3.7 Hegel and Home: Mutual Recoganition .......................................................... 110 3.8 Paradoxical Freedoms .................................................................................... 118 4 Unfair Resistance: Reading Whiteness In The God of Small Things ................. 127 4.1 Contextualizing Whiteness ............................................................................. 129 4.2 Unfair Kerala.................................................................................................. 134 4.3 Subversions of White Normalcy in The God of Small Things .......................... 139 4.4 Countering Stereotypes: Validating Local Worldviews and Indian english in The God of Small Things ................................................................................ 151 4.5 Comparative Perspectives in The God of Small Things ................................... 159 4.6 Rejecting Whiteness ....................................................................................... 163 4.7 Merging Gender and Racial Critiques ............................................................. 168 4.8 ―Tomorrow‖ ................................................................................................... 171 5 Conclusions .......................................................................................................... 174 Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 184 x 1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Most people in the world are Yellow, Black, Brown, Poor, Female, Non-Christian and do not speak English. - Audre Lorde, Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (1991) My problem is essentially the definition of the implicit systems in which we find ourselves prisoners; what I would like to grasp is the system of limits and exclusion which we practice without knowing it; I would like to make the cultural unconscious appar- ent. - Michel Foucault, ―Rituals of Exclusion‖ (1975) Nation…A large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people… A group of people having a single ethnic, tribal, or religious affilia- tion, but without a separate or politically independent territory. - Oxford English