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Papers by Debadrita Chakraborty

Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature, 2022

Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century, 2021

Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, 2013

Diaspora is a term often used today to describe practically any population which is considered "d... more Diaspora is a term often used today to describe practically any population which is considered "deterritorialised" or "translational"that is, which has originated in a land other than which it currently resides, and whose social, economic, and political networks cross the borders of nation states or span the globe. However the connotation of "diaspora" goes back in time and is a concept that referred almost exclusively to the experiences of the Jews, invoking their traumatic exile from an historical homeland and dispersal through many lands. The connotation of a "diaspora" situation was thus negative as they were associated with forced displacement, victimisation, alienation and loss. Along with this archetype went a dream of return. Nonetheless, not all forced migration suffered in loss and despair. This paper explores the new age concept of "diaspora consciousness" that according to James Clifford lives loss and hope as a defining tension in Arnold Zable's Café Scheherazade. The paper aims to portray the interplay of loss and hope in the lives of Jewish war stricken asylum seekers who, having migrated to Melbourne, a city alien to them, suffer both a longing for the past and a flickering hope of survival within the Jewish diaspora community, preserving the language and culture of their lot. The constant tussle between assimilating oneself within the foreign culture and feelings of displacement and haunting memories of the past that refrained one from absorption and acculturation is foregrounded in the research.

This paper aims to explore French feminist, Helen Cixous’ revolt against oppressive phallocentric... more This paper aims to explore French feminist, Helen Cixous’ revolt against oppressive phallocentric language and patriarchal conventions through her formulation of a new form of writing known as ecriture feminine or feminine writing through her seminal essay “The Laugh of the Medusa”. Establishing the rightful authority of women in a male dominated society, Cixous’ ecriture feminine is a reaction against female repression by phallocentric structures of the Western society. Ecriture feminine is the expression of the female body and sexuality in writing, an expression that cannot be coded or theorized. Cixous employs the motif of Medusa as a metaphor for women’s multiplicity that opposes patriarchal strictures on women’s body and voice. The research further foregrounds Cixous’ deconstruction of Jacques Lacan’s phallocentrism and Sigmund Freud’s misogynist “psychoanalytic closure” for women as she seeks to free all suppressed desires and impulses in women.

Gender, Work & Organization

Abstract The onset of the covid‐19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have not only impacted the p... more Abstract The onset of the covid‐19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have not only impacted the political, structural, and economic systems in India but have also engendered the growing rift between the poor and the rich, the upper and the lower classes, and the rural and the urban sections of the population. Within the nation's marginalized category, it is women who have suffered most forms of oppression. Having held a subordinate position to their male counterparts within the gender hierarchy, Indian women since the colonial times have had to bear systemic oppression at the hands of the state, caste, class, gender, and religious hegemons. During the pandemic, for women such forms of subordination were followed by socioeconomic uncertainties resulting from the economic shutdown, loss of jobs, and labor oppressions. Gender disparities resulting from class, caste and minority marginalization during the pandemic crisis have further widened the socio‐cultural, economic, and political inequalities within the country. Taking cue from the gender crisis in India catalyzed by the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, in this study, I aim to explore India's “unequal” transition to the post covid‐19 world order, studying gender inequality, violence and injustices from biopolitical and necropolitical lens. The framework of biopolitics and necropolitics, formulated by Foucault and Mbembe respectively have made significant contributions (following the pandemic outbreak) toward understanding how the state and social mechanisms of power that ideally should administer and foster life, guaranteeing health. and productivity of populations is currently pushing them into precarious living situations and conferring upon them the status of “living‐dead”.

Gender, Work & Organization, 2020

The onset of the covid‐19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have not only impacted the political,... more The onset of the covid‐19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have not only impacted the political, structural, and economic systems in India but have also engendered the growing rift between the poor and the rich, the upper and the lower classes, and the rural and the urban sections of the population. Within the nation's marginalized category, it is women who have suffered most forms of oppression. Having held a subordinate position to their male counterparts within the gender hierarchy, Indian women since the colonial times have had to bear systemic oppression at the hands of the state, caste, class, gender, and religious hegemons. During the pandemic, for women such forms of subordination were followed by socioeconomic uncertainties resulting from the economic shutdown, loss of jobs, and labor oppressions. Gender disparities resulting from class, caste and minority marginalization during the pandemic crisis have further widened the socio‐cultural, economic, and political inequalities within the country. Taking cue from the gender crisis in India catalyzed by the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, in this study, I aim to explore India's “unequal” transition to the post covid‐19 world order, studying gender inequality, violence and injustices from biopolitical and necropolitical lens. The framework of biopolitics and necropolitics, formulated by Foucault and Mbembe respectively have made significant contributions (following the pandemic outbreak) toward understanding how the state and social mechanisms of power that ideally should administer and foster life, guaranteeing health. and productivity of populations is currently pushing them into precarious living situations and conferring upon them the status of “living‐dead”.

Hyphen- An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Art & Culture , 2012

Crossroads – A Journal of English Studies , 2013

Families - A Journal of Representations , 2011

This paper aims to explore French feminist, Helen Cixous' revolt against oppressive phallocentric... more This paper aims to explore French feminist, Helen Cixous' revolt against oppressive phallocentric language and patriarchal conventions through her formulation of a new form of writing known as ecriture feminine or feminine writing through her seminal essay "The Laugh of the Medusa". Establishing the rightful authority of women in a male dominated society, Cixous' ecriture feminine is a reaction against female repression by phallocentric structures of the Western society.

Conferences by Debadrita Chakraborty

SASNET -Swedish South Asian Studies Network, 2020

The 2nd International Symposium on Men and Masculinities , 2019

On the Edge: Extremity and Feminism Sibéal Annual Conference, 2019

The argument that Empire was innately a construction reliant on the maintenance of carefully cali... more The argument that Empire was innately a construction reliant on the maintenance of carefully calibrated gender roles is nothing new. Unlike colonisation, the coloniality of gender continues to remain ever present which ‘lies at the intersection of gender/class/race as central constructs of the capitalist world system of power’. Taking this thought as a point of departure, I wish to focus on narratives where women have been able to resist the coloniality of gender from the ‘colonial difference’. By examining the place, role and experience of Dalit women and the myriad ways in which they construct and perform their gender against racialized, colonial, and capitalist heterosexualist gender oppression, I wish to portray the possibility of overcoming the coloniality of gender. The paper examining the Dalit narratives goes beyond providing accounts of the oppression of women and instead shows how women are able to understand their situation without succumbing to it. Through my textual comparisons of two Dalit novels, I wish to think in line with decolonial feminist, Maria Lugones’ observation that the colonised is neither as simply imagined and constructed by the colonizer and coloniality in accordance with the colonial imagination and the strictures of the capitalist colonial venture, but as a being who begins to inhabit a fractured locus constructed doubly, who perceives doubly, relates doubly, where the ‘sides’ of the locus are in tension, and the conflict itself actively informs the subjectivity of the colonized self in multiple relation. I would like to conclude this paper by enquiring about the space and place of decolonial literature within the Indian literary scene and the public sphere: What role does Dalit literature play within the Indian public sphere today? Can indigenous literature, culture and lived experience decolonise gender in India?

In the introduction to his book, A Child's World, James Walvin observes, ' Children too have a ve... more In the introduction to his book, A Child's World, James Walvin observes, ' Children too have a very marginal place in the historians' reconstruction of past time, despite the fact that they must have formed a substantial proportion of society we care to examine.' While children have figured in literature for a very long time, their role has not been sufficiently recognized in critical discourse. It is this marginalization of the child that needs to examined and analysed. This paper aims to explore the child as a subaltern subject in British Asian Literature who are predominantly portrayed as secondary or marginal characters.
While children, especially in postcolonial bildungsroman novels had a specific role to play, as child characters who critiqued the construction of society, and subsequently national identity, without overt bias, perhaps in order to reinforce the author's message, within diaspora literature the child character are rarely central as their consciousness, their points-of-view (always in the third person) and their voices remain tangential to adult stories and adult plots. This paper not only aims to explore the marginalisation of the subordinated child character but also the way in which the author as well as social, political and cultural factors construct the literary figure of the child as a subaltern character.

Ireland Institute of India, Dublin City University, 2018

Author Kazuo Ishiguro sees the word ‘dystopia’ as ‘some sort of a dark logical extension of the w... more Author Kazuo Ishiguro sees the word ‘dystopia’ as ‘some sort of a dark logical extension of the world, we already know.’ It is a fictional realm that however other-worldly, still feels relevant to current times and concerns. Stripping away the veneer of ‘India Rising,’ the new dystopian fiction in India the host of ways in which the nation state is constantly falling apart in the face of neoliberal and capitalist ideologies. In this paper, I wish to study the myriad ways in which the urban in India is represented as zones divided by community, surnames, caste and religion in the works of Prayaag Akbar’s Leila (2017) and Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Through the analysis of the representation of the urban space, I wish to then examine the ways in which these novels represent invisible subaltern lives in their fiction but also these individuals’ perceptions of dystopic, disintegrated realities. The objective then is to understand whether dystopia can be a much deeper exploration of the implication of alternative values than what is realistically attainable from ‘here and now’ that will help one reconstitute one’s self/identity.

Theoria Symposium: Gender, Performance and Theory, University of St Andrews, 2015

British Association of South Asian Studies Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, 2016

Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature, 2022

Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century, 2021

Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, 2013

Gender, Work & Organization

Gender, Work & Organization, 2020

Hyphen- An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Art & Culture , 2012

Crossroads – A Journal of English Studies , 2013

Families - A Journal of Representations , 2011

SASNET -Swedish South Asian Studies Network, 2020

The 2nd International Symposium on Men and Masculinities , 2019

On the Edge: Extremity and Feminism Sibéal Annual Conference, 2019

Ireland Institute of India, Dublin City University, 2018

Theoria Symposium: Gender, Performance and Theory, University of St Andrews, 2015

British Association of South Asian Studies Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, 2016

Biennial Conference of the International Association for the study of Religion and Gender (IARG), 2018

Swedish South Asian Studies Network, Lund University, 2016

The twentieth century saw the creation of many nations as the Colonial Empires fragmented. In Ind... more The twentieth century saw the creation of many nations as the Colonial Empires fragmented. In India, regional territories coalesced into a nation state and people had to devise new ways to construct their identities to emerge as a syncretic or a secular whole. While post-independence, India was essentially known as a democratic, secular nation, very little is known about the secular discourse initiated and practiced in both pre-colonial and colonial India by two major religious communities in India – the Hindus and the Muslims. It is this secular nationalism that was promoted by the Congress as opposed to the Hindu nationalism endorsed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. At the same time, it also becomes imperative to note that since much had been lost in translation and Orientalism has always been a western discourse, the concept of religious syncreticism that initiated discourses of nationalism and instilled young Hindu and Muslim minds with nationalist fervour during the colonial times was seldom mentioned in western texts and find little mention in postcolonial cultural and historical discourses.
In this paper, I wish to analyse and represent the Hindu-Muslim syncretism that existed in the pre-colonial and colonial era by studying lesser know short stories by the likes of Saadat Hasan Manto, Amrita Pritam and R.K Narayan. In this context, I will be employing the theoretical frameworks by Spivak and Bhabha to bridge a gap in history and manifest the formation of nationalistic sentiments through religious and cultural secularism. Through the medium of literature I wish to manifest the myriad ways in which modernity had already been ushered in India through the liberal, secular practices by religious communities in colonial India.

Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature, 2022

Author Kazuo Ishiguro labels ‘dystopia’ as ‘some sort of a dark logical extension of the world, w... more Author Kazuo Ishiguro labels ‘dystopia’ as ‘some sort of a dark logical extension of the world, we already know.’ It is a fictional realm that however other-worldly, still feels relevant to current times and concerns. The graphic novel is one such genre that employs a dystopian aesthetic to critique contemporary socio-political systems, cultural identity, national belonging, justice and equity in its attempt to enable readers to rethink the future away from injustices. This chapter draws from two Indian graphic novels, Corridor (2004) by Sarnath Banerjee and Delhi Calm (2010) by Vishwajyoti Ghosh to argue on the ways in which the dystopian aesthetic traces the cultural and political histories of India including socio-political discourses and repressed voices that have thus far been under-reported in conventional news media and largely missing from public sphere deliberations. Stripping away the veneer of “India Rising,” both Corridor and Delhi Calm manifest the myriad ways in which the nation-state has been constantly falling apart in the face of neoliberal and nationalist ideologies. I connect the term ‘dystopia’ with the term ‘urban’ since both Banerjee and Ghosh employ the urban paradigm as dystopian agents in their graphic narratives.

Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century Living Theories and True Ideas, 2021

Gender (In)equality: Literary, Linguistic and Artistic Responses to Gendered Dominance, IRF Press, 2017

Covid-19 Reflections from/for the Margins: Strengthening Solidarity, 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS Right Wing Politics: Interdisciplinary Reflections on South Asia Since the pas... more CALL FOR PAPERS

Right Wing Politics: Interdisciplinary Reflections on South Asia

Since the past decade, democracies globally have turned towards right wing leaders, parties and movements that demonstrated traits of xenophobia, nationalistic traits, a tendency towards authoritarianism and aggressive leadership among others. While right wing ideology in Europe promoted xenophobia against asylum seekers, U.S. led by Donald Trump endorsed an anti-immigrant agenda. In South Asia, right wing populism have thrived on majoritarian politics that sponsored socio-cultural, religious and political prejudices and carnages against minority communities. The growing popularity of right wing ideology continues to have both social and economic implications on South Asian states, more so for India’s socially-regulated economy. Temporally, such shift is closely correlated to a growing consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few corporations creating a historically unique condition where ethno-nationalism promotes a peculiar brand of capitalism.

Right wing politics have also seen translations within the South Asian public sphere in terms of various right wing movements that appropriate scientific discourse and uphold age-old religious and cultural theories and in doing so represent right wing ideology as the only rational alternative to survive within public and private spaces.

The proposed book calls for thought-provoking analyses that seek to interrogate the political and economic shift to the Right and its implications within the Global South. Full chapters are invited that reflect on factors embedded in the liberal politics of South Asia that have created a foundation for occasional Rightist turns and prognosis for its retreat. Chapters may also consider circumstances in which right wing populism appears and the particulars of the political strategy that the right wing leaders and movements in South Asia employ. Are right wing political formations a product of perceived distress or are they a central part of the process of political transformation in the region? How do they relate to the perceived ‘democratization’? Contributors are invited to examine aspects of these complex linkages, seeking to understand and explain the rise of the political Right in the Global South especially the links between right wing politics, economic conditions and socio-cultural and religious formations.

Papers of no more than 7000 words using Harvard-style referencing should be submitted by 31st July to cfpsouthasia@gmail.com along with a short bio. The edited book will be published by a reputed international publisher.

Chapters may include but are not limited to the following topics:

History, myth and ideology
Gender, nation and citizenship
Capitalism and right wing culture
Right wing movements and minority rights
Biopolitics, necropolitics and right wing ideology
Caste, class and politics in South Asia
Culture, literature, film and the right wing in South Asia
Right wing politics of decolonization
Nostalgia and right wing politics
Pandemic and the politics of death
Diaspora, ideology and politics

Editors:
Bhabani Shankar Nayak
Professor, Business Management, University for the Creative Arts, UK

Debadrita Chakraborty
Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Studies, UPES, India

Special Issue on 75 years of Partition The Hate that never was: Love and hope in the times of pa... more Special Issue on 75 years of Partition

The Hate that never was: Love and hope in the times of partition and beyond

In 2021, one of the accounts of Partition that gained unprecedented views and appreciation on social media was one of ‘true love wherein the elderly Pritam Kaur reminiscenced her days spent in the refugee camp during the partition period. How her 16-year-old self hoped for her fiancé, Bhagwan Singh Maini safety and how he suffering from similar longing and hope found her in one of the camps, having frantically searched for her for 90 days. The narrative of ‘pure love’ that lives beyond boundaries, shackles and challenges elicits the question as to why more such stories that sustained and nurtured lives of partition victims in the face of loss have not been narrated enough. Perhaps partition archives and academic study have delved deeper into the politics of loss, trauma, amnesia, and violence than exploring narratives of love, resilience, courage and onward journeys of victims and their subsequent generations. According to Chenoy, ‘to memorialise Partition is to record that there are always many narratives. Cherry-picking one narrative of hatred distorts history’ (2021). While Pritam’s phulkari jacket and Bhagwan’s brown briefcase form an important relict of partition history and of Amritsar’s Partition Museum, there are many more such stories that lie buried under the politics and historicity of partition.

This proposed issue aims to explore renewed reflections on the narratives of love, hope, resilience, and progressive trajectories in the lives of partition victims and the subsequent generations with an aim to present the less traversed, other half of the subcontinent’s partition history. In doing so, this issue aims to revisit questions such as : what consisted of India’s gateway into the postcolonial and how religion-based mobilisation for state power during partition have been employed by right wing political discourses to widen socio-cultural and economic divide between castes, classes, and ethnic minorities in India. The same can be said about state politics in Bangladesh and Pakistan where the national rhetoric has created class, community, and religious differences. On the occasion of 75th year of the partition, this issue aims to bring together scholars from South Asia and beyond who are willing to begin new conversations on the Partition exploring lost narratives of hope, love, and resilience during and after partition and how these narratives of courage have percolated into and have been archived by subsequent generations.

Topics include but are not limited to:
• Individual vs collective consciousness of courage and resilience
• Postcolonial legacies of partition – narratives of rehabilitation and resettlement
• Memory, affects and emotion Cross-cultural/border links post partition – music, media and performance
• Role of historicity and authenticity in the making of post partition nations
• Archiving oral histories: survivor narratives of love, loss and hope
• Intergenerational memory - narratives of progressive trajectories
• Cultural representations of tolerance and sacrifice
• Religious syncretism in the aftermath of the partition
• Tracing partition memories: role of digital media
• Memory and memorialisation of resilience in literary and cinematic representations
• Narratives of love, loss and hope from the South Asian diaspora

We invite 300-word abstracts to be submitted by 26th April 2022 to partition75cfp@gmail.com along with a short bio.

Full papers between 6000 and 7000 words to be submitted by 15th October 2022. All papers submitted will go through the standard peer review process. The special issue will be published in a SCOPUS indexed SAGE journal.

Debadrita Chakraborty
Assistant Professor
School of Liberal Studies
UPES, Dehradun, India