Manju Edachira | Brandeis University (original) (raw)
Papers by Manju Edachira
Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2022
This article studies Malayalam cinema's engagement with its own history through the medium and th... more This article studies Malayalam cinema's engagement with its own history through the medium and the production of affective archives. It endeavours to understand the use of archival materials in cinema and explores the affective potential of films in the creation of generative archives. Thus, the article studies select Malayalam films of the post-2000s that employed 'cinema within cinema' and argues that through the tropes of the lost heroine (Thirakkatha and Nayika), lost time (Vellaripravinte Changathi) and lost history (Celluloid), these films explore the past through affective archiving. Further, it discusses the archival recuperation of P. K. Rosy, the first heroine of Malayalam cinema, and how the oppressed communities engage with archives in the present as a political and aesthetic act for an emancipatory future. In short, the article examines the possibilities of affective archiving within and outside cinema in interrogating dominant historical narratives.
Critical Collective, 2022
This paper attempts to study the film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu as a creative challenge to caste ... more This paper attempts to study the film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu as a creative challenge to caste (un)reason and argues that Pa. Ranjith offers a Kintsugi (Japanese art of fixing broken pottery and making it invaluable) through the character of Rene, an Ambedkarite woman. Secondly, it seeks to study the ‘co-possibility of love’ – offered by the film through art and aesthetics – beyond the earthly discriminatory practices, beliefs and customs towards the world of possibilities, hope and meaningful transformation. Finally, it endeavours to read the film within the context of intermedial interventions and the aesthetic experiments of Pa. Ranjith in Tamil cinema for the last decade.
The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India, Oct 5, 2022
This chapter conceptualises Magizhchi—a Tamil term that signifies joy, happiness, glee, and excit... more This chapter conceptualises Magizhchi—a Tamil term that signifies joy, happiness, glee, and excitement—made popular by the Tamil film director Pa. Ranjith to understand and evaluate the sensorial signification of his experiments with performance and music (Aadalum-Paadalum) in the filmic medium. Through Magizhchi—an affect which prompts one to move beyond the oppressed past towards an emancipatory future—Ranjith transforms the way Dalit subjectivities are imagined in Indian cinema. By foregrounding the works of the music band that Ranjith initiated, ‘The Casteless Collective’—inspired from the 20th-century anti-caste Tamil intellectual Iyothee Thass—features Gaana (Tamil music form mainly performed by Dalits in urban slums), hip-hop, and fusions of world music and by analysing the song performances in his films such as Atta Kathi (Card Board Knife, 2012), Madras (2014), Kabali (2016), and Kaala (2018), we suggest an anti-caste re-scripting of sensibilities—a ‘becoming-other-than-itself’. Thus, the chapter demonstrates that Ranjith’s interventions not only expose inscriptions of caste but also creatively stage acts of exscription against caste in films.
EPW ENGAGE, 2022
The article attempts to examine the idea of critical presence in opposition to representational r... more The article attempts to examine the idea of critical presence in opposition to representational realm by examining the presence of two Dalit actors from Malayalam film industry: (the late) Kalabhavan Mani and Vinayakan, in Indian media. Instead of focusing on their characters and films, this article seeks to explore the possibilities opened up by these actors through their critical presence in the industry though they differ in their approach.
Economic and Political Weekly, 2020
The cinematic interventions of contemporary Dalit film-makers in India, Nagraj Manjule and Pa Ran... more The cinematic interventions of contemporary Dalit film-makers in India, Nagraj Manjule and Pa Ranjith, among others, represent modes of resistant historiography, employed by Dalits, against the aesthetic regime of stereotypical representation, through innovative techniques in visuals, sound, music, and cinematography. The paper attempts to evaluate and argue for an enabling anti-caste aesthetics articulated
through an embodied sensibility in films. The paper argues that these film-makers not only disturb “the unconscious of caste” through an explicit anti-caste aesthetics but also produce affective, expressive
archives. In other words, they bring into presence what was previously impossible through the processes of denunciation (of casteist images) and innovation (of anti-caste aesthetics).
Malayalam Research Journal, 2020
This paper critically studies the manifestations of ‘realism’ propagated by Malayalam cinema duri... more This paper critically studies the manifestations of ‘realism’ propagated by Malayalam cinema during 1980s and ’90s — the period when “Kerala model of development” became popular. The modern obsession with reflexivity over sentimentality, and its employment in Malayalam cinema as ‘middlebrow,’ was also experimented in films that were made on cinema during this period. This is foregrounded in films such as Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback (The Death of Lekha: A Flashback, Dir. K.G. George, 1983), an example of the middlebrow. Studies on metanarratives and reflexivity, just like how modernity affects people, largely focus on Brechtian ‘alienation.’ The paper, however, argues that Malayalam cinema produces ‘double mystification’ instead of alienation. Though this is executed through self-referentiality at the surface level, it reiterates realism as a hegemonic mode of production at the latent level. Thus, it is purposive realist aesthetics in middlebrow cinema that create the spectatorial Malayalee modern self. In other words, the cinema during this period makes middlebrow as the ‘popular’ by devising the figure of Malayalee citizen-spectator, who is made to distinguish oneself, from the ‘mass-ified’ other. The paper goes on to theorise that the ‘real’ within/of Malayalam cinema exorcises its own excess — sentimental melodrama, caste and sexuality — to the Tamil Other.
Ala: A Kerala Studies Blog, 2020
Caesurae: Poetics of Cultural Translation, 2017
This paper looks at cinema-within-cinema as a way of archiving the history of cinema. It looks sp... more This paper looks at cinema-within-cinema as a way of archiving the history of cinema. It looks specifically at the way in which the history of Malayalam cinema is archived in the film Celluloid (Malayalam, 2013, dir. Kamal). Looking at the way in which the film Celluloid narrates the story of P.K. Rosy, the actress of the film Vigathakumaran, who as a 'lower caste' [Dalit] girl played the role of a Nair lady in the film, leading to the tragic ways in which the first film descended into the dark past, the paper argues that there is a systematic erasure of Dalits in the process of archiving history of cinema, in cinema.
Thesis Synopsis by Manju Edachira
MPhil Thesis, 2013
This dissertation seeks to analyse the representation of Tamil identity in Malayalam cinema, espe... more This dissertation seeks to analyse the representation of Tamil identity in Malayalam cinema, especially in the films after 1990s. With special focus on Manichithrathazhu (The Ornate Lock, Dir. Fazil; 1993), Meleparambil Aanveedu (Dir. Rajasenan; 1993), Thenkashipattanam (Thenkashi Town, Dir. Rafi Mecartin; 2000), Pandipada (Army of Pandis, Dir. Rafi Mecartin; 2005), and City of God (Dir. Lijo Joss Pellissery; 2011), it analyses the Malayalee attitude towards the Tamil other. It attempts to investigate the construction of Tamil identity, paradigms of that construction, and what is termed as the 'Tamilness' by the Malayalees.
PhD Thesis (synopsis) submitted in June 2019, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hy... more PhD Thesis (synopsis) submitted in June 2019, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad.
Articles (Malayalam) by Manju Edachira
Navamalayali, 2020
Foregrounding Ava Duvarney's powerful documentary film 13th, I attempt to examine the emancipator... more Foregrounding Ava Duvarney's powerful documentary film 13th, I attempt to examine the emancipatory aesthetics employed by the oppressed communities. The article also looks at Malayalam and other Indian language films to understand the spatial othering and its recent inversion.
Navamalayali (Sep, 2020), 2020
Books by Manju Edachira
Malayalam Research Journal , 2020
Spoecial issue edited by Shiju Sam Varughese ISSN 09741984 This special issue showcases the res... more Spoecial issue edited by Shiju Sam Varughese
ISSN 09741984
This special issue showcases the research of young scholars who work on Kerala Modernity.
eDhvani: UoH Journal of Comparative Literature CONTENT, 2015
Talks by Manju Edachira
Kerala Museum Janal Lecture Series, 2023
This lecture intends to explore Kodungallur Bharani (a temple festival in Kerala, known for its s... more This lecture intends to explore Kodungallur Bharani (a temple festival in Kerala, known for its subversive nature) as an ‘intimate event’ of resistance (against Caste Hindu hegemony), and revival (of Buddhist past), foregrounding space, language, and experience. Firstly, I examine how the spatiality of Bharani (Kodungallur/kavu) creates certain intimacies while tampering with the other. Secondly, I analyse the language of Bharani and its politics through which the caste oppressed communities are placed outside the time and space of the dominant. Thirdly, I discuss Bharani as an embodied experience of the devotees who straddle between the oppressive caste society and the egalitarian civilizational claims, devotion and defiance, rejection and revival. Thus, the talk endeavours to unpack the carnivalesque nature of the festival, the devotional performance, and the ‘casteless’ histories, particularly from the site and sight of Keezhkavu.
Book Reviews by Manju Edachira
Economic and Political Weekly, 2024
Book Review: Contested Representation: Dalits, Popular Hindi Cinema, and Public Sphere by Dhananj... more Book Review: Contested Representation: Dalits, Popular Hindi Cinema, and Public Sphere by Dhananjay Rai, London: Lexington Books, 2022; pp 268.
January 13, 2024; vol 59, no 2, pp 27-30.
Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2022
This article studies Malayalam cinema's engagement with its own history through the medium and th... more This article studies Malayalam cinema's engagement with its own history through the medium and the production of affective archives. It endeavours to understand the use of archival materials in cinema and explores the affective potential of films in the creation of generative archives. Thus, the article studies select Malayalam films of the post-2000s that employed 'cinema within cinema' and argues that through the tropes of the lost heroine (Thirakkatha and Nayika), lost time (Vellaripravinte Changathi) and lost history (Celluloid), these films explore the past through affective archiving. Further, it discusses the archival recuperation of P. K. Rosy, the first heroine of Malayalam cinema, and how the oppressed communities engage with archives in the present as a political and aesthetic act for an emancipatory future. In short, the article examines the possibilities of affective archiving within and outside cinema in interrogating dominant historical narratives.
Critical Collective, 2022
This paper attempts to study the film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu as a creative challenge to caste ... more This paper attempts to study the film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu as a creative challenge to caste (un)reason and argues that Pa. Ranjith offers a Kintsugi (Japanese art of fixing broken pottery and making it invaluable) through the character of Rene, an Ambedkarite woman. Secondly, it seeks to study the ‘co-possibility of love’ – offered by the film through art and aesthetics – beyond the earthly discriminatory practices, beliefs and customs towards the world of possibilities, hope and meaningful transformation. Finally, it endeavours to read the film within the context of intermedial interventions and the aesthetic experiments of Pa. Ranjith in Tamil cinema for the last decade.
The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India, Oct 5, 2022
This chapter conceptualises Magizhchi—a Tamil term that signifies joy, happiness, glee, and excit... more This chapter conceptualises Magizhchi—a Tamil term that signifies joy, happiness, glee, and excitement—made popular by the Tamil film director Pa. Ranjith to understand and evaluate the sensorial signification of his experiments with performance and music (Aadalum-Paadalum) in the filmic medium. Through Magizhchi—an affect which prompts one to move beyond the oppressed past towards an emancipatory future—Ranjith transforms the way Dalit subjectivities are imagined in Indian cinema. By foregrounding the works of the music band that Ranjith initiated, ‘The Casteless Collective’—inspired from the 20th-century anti-caste Tamil intellectual Iyothee Thass—features Gaana (Tamil music form mainly performed by Dalits in urban slums), hip-hop, and fusions of world music and by analysing the song performances in his films such as Atta Kathi (Card Board Knife, 2012), Madras (2014), Kabali (2016), and Kaala (2018), we suggest an anti-caste re-scripting of sensibilities—a ‘becoming-other-than-itself’. Thus, the chapter demonstrates that Ranjith’s interventions not only expose inscriptions of caste but also creatively stage acts of exscription against caste in films.
EPW ENGAGE, 2022
The article attempts to examine the idea of critical presence in opposition to representational r... more The article attempts to examine the idea of critical presence in opposition to representational realm by examining the presence of two Dalit actors from Malayalam film industry: (the late) Kalabhavan Mani and Vinayakan, in Indian media. Instead of focusing on their characters and films, this article seeks to explore the possibilities opened up by these actors through their critical presence in the industry though they differ in their approach.
Economic and Political Weekly, 2020
The cinematic interventions of contemporary Dalit film-makers in India, Nagraj Manjule and Pa Ran... more The cinematic interventions of contemporary Dalit film-makers in India, Nagraj Manjule and Pa Ranjith, among others, represent modes of resistant historiography, employed by Dalits, against the aesthetic regime of stereotypical representation, through innovative techniques in visuals, sound, music, and cinematography. The paper attempts to evaluate and argue for an enabling anti-caste aesthetics articulated
through an embodied sensibility in films. The paper argues that these film-makers not only disturb “the unconscious of caste” through an explicit anti-caste aesthetics but also produce affective, expressive
archives. In other words, they bring into presence what was previously impossible through the processes of denunciation (of casteist images) and innovation (of anti-caste aesthetics).
Malayalam Research Journal, 2020
This paper critically studies the manifestations of ‘realism’ propagated by Malayalam cinema duri... more This paper critically studies the manifestations of ‘realism’ propagated by Malayalam cinema during 1980s and ’90s — the period when “Kerala model of development” became popular. The modern obsession with reflexivity over sentimentality, and its employment in Malayalam cinema as ‘middlebrow,’ was also experimented in films that were made on cinema during this period. This is foregrounded in films such as Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback (The Death of Lekha: A Flashback, Dir. K.G. George, 1983), an example of the middlebrow. Studies on metanarratives and reflexivity, just like how modernity affects people, largely focus on Brechtian ‘alienation.’ The paper, however, argues that Malayalam cinema produces ‘double mystification’ instead of alienation. Though this is executed through self-referentiality at the surface level, it reiterates realism as a hegemonic mode of production at the latent level. Thus, it is purposive realist aesthetics in middlebrow cinema that create the spectatorial Malayalee modern self. In other words, the cinema during this period makes middlebrow as the ‘popular’ by devising the figure of Malayalee citizen-spectator, who is made to distinguish oneself, from the ‘mass-ified’ other. The paper goes on to theorise that the ‘real’ within/of Malayalam cinema exorcises its own excess — sentimental melodrama, caste and sexuality — to the Tamil Other.
Ala: A Kerala Studies Blog, 2020
Caesurae: Poetics of Cultural Translation, 2017
This paper looks at cinema-within-cinema as a way of archiving the history of cinema. It looks sp... more This paper looks at cinema-within-cinema as a way of archiving the history of cinema. It looks specifically at the way in which the history of Malayalam cinema is archived in the film Celluloid (Malayalam, 2013, dir. Kamal). Looking at the way in which the film Celluloid narrates the story of P.K. Rosy, the actress of the film Vigathakumaran, who as a 'lower caste' [Dalit] girl played the role of a Nair lady in the film, leading to the tragic ways in which the first film descended into the dark past, the paper argues that there is a systematic erasure of Dalits in the process of archiving history of cinema, in cinema.
MPhil Thesis, 2013
This dissertation seeks to analyse the representation of Tamil identity in Malayalam cinema, espe... more This dissertation seeks to analyse the representation of Tamil identity in Malayalam cinema, especially in the films after 1990s. With special focus on Manichithrathazhu (The Ornate Lock, Dir. Fazil; 1993), Meleparambil Aanveedu (Dir. Rajasenan; 1993), Thenkashipattanam (Thenkashi Town, Dir. Rafi Mecartin; 2000), Pandipada (Army of Pandis, Dir. Rafi Mecartin; 2005), and City of God (Dir. Lijo Joss Pellissery; 2011), it analyses the Malayalee attitude towards the Tamil other. It attempts to investigate the construction of Tamil identity, paradigms of that construction, and what is termed as the 'Tamilness' by the Malayalees.
PhD Thesis (synopsis) submitted in June 2019, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hy... more PhD Thesis (synopsis) submitted in June 2019, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad.
Navamalayali, 2020
Foregrounding Ava Duvarney's powerful documentary film 13th, I attempt to examine the emancipator... more Foregrounding Ava Duvarney's powerful documentary film 13th, I attempt to examine the emancipatory aesthetics employed by the oppressed communities. The article also looks at Malayalam and other Indian language films to understand the spatial othering and its recent inversion.
Navamalayali (Sep, 2020), 2020
Malayalam Research Journal , 2020
Spoecial issue edited by Shiju Sam Varughese ISSN 09741984 This special issue showcases the res... more Spoecial issue edited by Shiju Sam Varughese
ISSN 09741984
This special issue showcases the research of young scholars who work on Kerala Modernity.
eDhvani: UoH Journal of Comparative Literature CONTENT, 2015
Kerala Museum Janal Lecture Series, 2023
This lecture intends to explore Kodungallur Bharani (a temple festival in Kerala, known for its s... more This lecture intends to explore Kodungallur Bharani (a temple festival in Kerala, known for its subversive nature) as an ‘intimate event’ of resistance (against Caste Hindu hegemony), and revival (of Buddhist past), foregrounding space, language, and experience. Firstly, I examine how the spatiality of Bharani (Kodungallur/kavu) creates certain intimacies while tampering with the other. Secondly, I analyse the language of Bharani and its politics through which the caste oppressed communities are placed outside the time and space of the dominant. Thirdly, I discuss Bharani as an embodied experience of the devotees who straddle between the oppressive caste society and the egalitarian civilizational claims, devotion and defiance, rejection and revival. Thus, the talk endeavours to unpack the carnivalesque nature of the festival, the devotional performance, and the ‘casteless’ histories, particularly from the site and sight of Keezhkavu.
Economic and Political Weekly, 2024
Book Review: Contested Representation: Dalits, Popular Hindi Cinema, and Public Sphere by Dhananj... more Book Review: Contested Representation: Dalits, Popular Hindi Cinema, and Public Sphere by Dhananjay Rai, London: Lexington Books, 2022; pp 268.
January 13, 2024; vol 59, no 2, pp 27-30.