Betwixt and Between: Aspects of Liminality in Mahasweta Devi’s “Operation? Bashai Tudu”
Keywords:
liminality; counter-narrative; revolution; passage; transgressionAbstract
Liminality and postcolonial narratology parallelly question stable identities and dominant hierarchies, examining definite classification and sharp boundaries, thus often coexisting. Mahasweta Devi’s fictions generally explore the lives of tribals in post-independence India covering a wide range of relationships of domination, dependence and those in-between. This paper aims to show how the inherent power-dynamics between the ‘authority’ and the ‘marginalized’ allow Devi to explore the liminality of ‘revolution’ in her novella “Operation? Bashai Tudu”. Using arguments proposed by Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner and Yi-Fu Tuan, I have explained how “Operation? - Bashai Tudu” epitomizes the characteristics of liminality. I contend that identity, ambiguity, instability, borderzones and their inter-relation form the core value of the text, uncovering the entre-deux of existence in midst of social turmoil. The paper seeks to explain, through Devi’s work, the results of transgressing threshold of normative duality, along with the significance of symbolic-rites and imaginary landscapes.
References
Bagchi, Alaknanda. “Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi’s Bashai Tudu.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41-50. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/463971.
Dasgupta, Subha Chakraborty. “Contesting Polarities: Creating Spaces – Reading Myths in Mahasweta Devi’s Stories.” Indian Literature, vol. 47, no. 2 (214), 2003, pp. 200-05. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23341402.
Devi, Mahasweta. “Author’s Preface to the First Edition.” Bashai Tudu, Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay, Thema, 2016, p. xix.
Devi, Mahasweta. Bashai Tudu. Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay, Thema, 2016.
Downey, Dara, et al., editors, “Locating Liminality: Space, Place, and the In-Between.” Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place. Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016, pp. 1-26.
Khilnani, Sunil. “Panoptical Views on Politics: Nationalism.” YouTube, uploaded by Asia Society, 17 Nov. 2021, https://youtu.be/6WnBaSVl7ek.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge, 1993, p. 78.
Spivak, Gyayatri Chakravorty. “’Breast-Giver’: For Author, Reader, Teacher, Subaltern, Historian…” Breast Stories.By Mahasweta Devi, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Seagull Books Pvt. Ltd, 1997, p. 77.
Tally Jr., Robert T.. ““A Utopia of the In-Between”, or, Limining the Liminal.” Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place, edited by Dara Downey et al., Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016, pp. xi-xii.
Talwar, Urmil. “The Subaltern Speaks.” Indian Literature, vol. 56, no. 6 (272), 2012, pp. 218- 21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43856669.
Thomassen, Bjørn. Liminality and the Modern: Living through the In-Between. Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. The University of Minnesota Press, 1977, pp. 3-6.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 94- 95.
van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee, University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp. 3.
