Kalabhavan Mani: The Metaphysics of the Acting of a Dalit Actor from South India

Abstract

This monograph explores in detail the acting persona of Kalabhavan Mani (1971–2016), a prominent film actor of Dalit origin from Kerala, who acted as hero and villain in many south Indian movies. Well known and loved for his singing, acting, mimicking skills, comic anecdotes and spontaneous humour, this actor was never taken as a serious intellectual/thinker by the Kerala mainstream ostensibly because of him being a school dropout. Drawing on Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, a methodological inquiry is made into the casteist dimension of this strategy of framing, real as well as reel, by which the metaphysics of the acting out of laughter and laughing out of acting enacted/embodied by Dalit body/discourse is contained, distorted and nullified.

Keywords

Film & Cinema mimicry Dalit representation laughter

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References

Deleuze

, & Guattari

(2003). Kafka: Toward a minor literature ( Polan

, Trans.). University of Minneapolis.

Lacan

(1998). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis (The seminar of Jacques Lacan) ( Sheridan

, Trans.; Miller

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