Women Write Back Exploring the Structures of Feeling in Select Self Writing

Abstract

Articulation, both speaking and writing, is considered an effective tool to offer resistance.However, language is a potent tool used by the dominant in constructing binaries. The mainstream appropriates language to control and dominate the subaltern. . The subaltern is denied an authentic presence in the mainstream discourses. These individuals are bereft of an agency or dignity- individuals with no sense of being. The gravity of the situation intensifies when the subaltern is a woman. Literature is now being used as tools to demolish the existing dichotomies. Life writing as a literary genres insist on re-thinking the past and consciously eliminating the traditional elements of hegemonic biases that has silenced the marginalized. Life- writing is an expression that covers writings around the theme of self or life by an individual or a group of people. The subaltern self-narratives have been serving as a major tool of resistance for the voiceless. The main objective of this thesis is to understand how the subaltern female writers through their self-narratives respond and resist the mainstream construction of subaltern Indian female . newlineNalini Jameela s The Autobiography of a Sex Worker, Phoolan Devi s I Phoolan: The Autobiography of India s Bandit Queen and Mayilamma s Mayilamma: TheLife of a Tribal Eco Warrior are oral autobiographies transliterated into vernaculars and then translated into English. These three women can be considered the harbingers of modern subaltern resistance, though they are not writers per se. This in itself is a motivation behind the present work to study how an account of their life experiences not only makes a potential intervention in the mainstream literature but also causes serious repercussions in the public sphere. Subaltern writers often use self-narratives as a convenient platform to locate themselves in the flux of binaries. This study examines the significance of subaltern autobiographies as tools of resistance against oppression newlineand exploitation- a unique.....