Those Who Live at the Shoreline: Life & Death of the Dalit Subalterns as seen in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51427/com.est.2024.03.02.0006Palavras-chave:
Bare Life, Dalits, Dehumanization, Sovereign Power, Subaltern, ThanatopoliticsResumo
For long, the tension between life and death has shaped our understanding of human existence. Nevertheless, thinkers like Agamben (1998) posit that power and politics also play an essential role in defining our lived realities. His concept of homo sacer illustrates how power dynamics systematically marginalize certain individuals, stripping them of their humanity and pushing them to the fringes of society. Even in modern democracies that profess to uphold rights, many remain invisible. This raises a critical question: Do these promises of autonomy truly extend to everyone? In this context, this paper explores the representation and lived experiences of Dalit subalterns in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004) and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997). By exploring these texts, the study aims to reveal how systemic marginalization impacts individual realities, ultimately challenging notions of autonomy in modern democracies and highlighting the broader implications of power and exclusion on human existence.
Referências
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Patel, Anuja. 2020. “From Reverence to Destruction: An Eco-Critical Approach to Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” JETIR 7 (12): 362–370. https://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2012053.pdf.
Roy, Arundhati. 2002. The God of Small Things. Haryana: Penguin Books India.
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Direitos de Autor (c) 2024 Sakshi Sethi
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