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Debdatta Chakraborty, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, IndiaAbstract
The oppressive societal status of Bengali Dalit women, impacted by the intersectional factors of caste and gender discrimination, has not been discussed extensively by mainstream Bengali academia. Writings of Dalit women writers belonging to West Bengal gained significant momentum as a counter-discourse to challenge the stereotypical portrayal of the Dalit women populace by mainstream and male Dalit authors. Their writings criticize the caste factor that exercises its power through hierarchical forms of violence prevalent against Dalits in West Bengal. This article intends to analyze the painful lived experiences of the Bengali Dalit strata and the counter-representation of caste-based violence and oppression in two Bengali short stories titled Ups and Downs and The Conflict written by notable Bengali Dalit feminist and writer Manju Bala. These stories are analyzed from the background of Teresa De Lauretis’s concept of the “rhetoric of violence,” which recognizes how the language of violence codifies and constructs objects and subjects of violence to propagate dominant ideologies. The article investigates how the authors depict the traumatic effect produced by caste-based violence on the Dalit psyche. This article will also look at the factor of intersectionality and how it impacts the suffering of the Dalit women populace of West Bengal. To develop this paper, the researcher has consulted theoretical formulations on caste stratification, caste-gender subjugation, Brahmanical patriarchy, intersectionality, and traumatic realism to understand the holistic scenario of oppression faced by the Dalit women strata.
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Conference: PCAH2025Stream: Literature/Literary Studies
This paper is part of the PCAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Chakraborty D. (2025) Understanding the Caste-Gender Dichotomy, Suffering and “Rhetoric of Violence” Through Manju Bala’s Ups and Downs and The Conflict ISSN: 2758-0970 The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 97-102) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2025.9
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2025.9
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