Women Bodies and Emotions in Writings by Dalit Women Writers in India

Resumen

Drawing upon theoretical conceptions on body from body studies and life-writing of Dalit women writers such as Bama, Baby Kamble, and Urmila Pawar, this article attempts to understand  how Dalit women write their female bodies into their autobiographical texts, and present them in ways that subvert the docile image accorded to their bodies since time immemorial. Dalit women often include their emotional and bodily experiences in their autobiographical writings in the process of revaluing varied aspects of human experience.

This article will also explore how life-writing charged with a certain sense of ‘emotion’ becomes a significant tool for women to voice their concerns, and in so doing, presents a counter narrative in which women tend to occupy subject positions, thereby rewriting the androcentric script in a manner that provide agency to Dalit women characters.

 

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