The Politics of Difference and Dalit Life Narratives: Negotiating Dalit Feminist Écriture

Abstract

Dalit writings represent the struggles of the members of the community through a resistant poetic style of writing. However, the representation of Dalit women, through a male dominant lens, has either been distorted or obliterated from the prime picture of the struggle. They, on the contrary, through Dalit feminist narratives, engage in disruption of the pre-established image of themselves, presenting a narratable self, which stands ‘different’ from the pre-existing image. The study elucidates the politics of difference by formulating Dalit feminist écriture (French word meaning writing/script) analysing language, performance and style. Babytai Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke (2018), Bama’s Sangati (2005) and Viramma’s Viramma, Life of an Untouchable (1997) are critically analysed to negotiate Dalit feminist écriture as performance through Dalit female bodies, developing on the theoretical framework of Hélène Cixous’s écriture féminine and Gopal Guru’s ‘the politics of difference’. The study infers that Dalit feminist difference constitutes a history of becoming.