SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English

Notes on Contributors

Susan Philip — 2024-06-30

Notes on Contributors

Beefing up Resistance Onscreen: Cow Politics and Non-vegetarian Carnivals in Post- 2015 Malayalam Films

Chithira James — 2024-06-30

With the rise of Hindutva fundamentalism in India, the hegemony of vegetarianism and the resultant othering of subaltern/non-vegetarian food cultures have intensified. Consequently, Dalits, Adivasis and various religious minorities are being subject to physical and symbolic forms of violence on grounds of their dietary habits. While members of these communities, mostly in the Northern states of India, became victims of lynching by cow vigilantes, acts of resistance termed as ‘Beef Festivals’ were organised across Kerala since 2015. Aided by the peculiar socio-political climate of the state, Malayalam films rapidly assimilated the celebratory/fearless spirit of these festivals of resistance. Reassertion of non-vegetarian culinary traditions, specifically those that are deemed transgressive in the national milieu, by placing them in the political context of Hindutva has become a practice in Malayalam films. By critically looking at select Malayalam films produced in this period, the paper attempts to study the carnivalesque performances in these films and argues that they construct carnival spaces that subvert the food-based hierarchies prevalent in India.

Psychogeographical Remapping of Hong Kong between Being and Non-being in Liu Yichang’s Intersection

Jianbo Su — 2024-06-30

Much has been done on positioning Hong Kong’s cultural impasse in the confrontation between the recent rise of Hong Kong nativism laced with pre-colonial lingering and the increasing force of nationalism from the mainland since its 1997 handover. However, overemphasis on the in-betweenness would incite a defensive mechanism for over-reactive self-justification and lead to the trap of radical nativism and intra-racial rivalry. Under this circumstance, this paper, inspired by the framework of psychogeography and Chinese Zen Daoism, proposes an innovative model that critically integrates dérive with being and non-being. This synergistic paradigm offers an alternative lens to reversely harness ambivalence and rootlessness as a tactical breakthrough in rereading Hong Kong’s hybridity in Liu Yichang’s Intersection as an imaginary space of multi-directional self-articulation. In addition, it contributes to actualizing a creative praxis of strategic intervention to disrupt the vicious circle of identity wrestling and anticipate a dialectical re-entry into the Hong Kong-Mainland identity landscape as a divergent yet interwoven duet.

The Prisoner of the Precarious Body: An Odyssey of Dalit Women in Bama’s Sangati

Anshul Dhankar — 2024-06-30

The body is regarded as a fundamental text for understanding the self, as it is interpreted as both a reflection as well as the creation of the societal structure in which it exists. The female body becomes a symbol on which the conflicting ideologies and discourses of the socio-cultural milieu are engraved. At the forefront of this, lies the body of a Dalit woman, a battleground where dynamics of power collide and the struggle for dignity and autonomy unfolds. Weighed down by the overlapping mechanisms of gender, sexuality, caste, class, and community, their bodies, therefore, become political fields of containment and control. In light of this, the present paper delves into Bama Faustina’s Sangati (2005) to covertly depict the body politics of gradated patriarchy disclosing the unfettered (s)exploitation of women but simultaneously tracing a paradigm shift through facilitating means of resistance for the Dalit women.

‘I am Chandalini, and I am Proud of that. You must Accept and Respect it’: Conversation with Kalyani Thakur Charal

DEBDATTA CHAKRABORTY — 2024-06-30

This interview with the notable Bengali Dalit woman writer in the realm of Caste and Gender Studies, Kalyani Thakur Charal, encompasses the diverse facets of caste-gender centric issues, caste-based stratification, particularly in connection with the Bengali Dalit community in the context of West Bengal. She puts forward her argument on the matters of caste-gender intersectionality, the impact of patriarchy, and the marginalization of Bengali Dalit women section. This discussion sheds light on the anti-caste struggle, which was prominent in Bengal during the colonial times, the major personas related with that struggle, the experiences of the Bengali Dalit strata in West Bengal, the partition of India in 1947 and its effect on the Bengali Dalits and most importantly the challenges faced by the Bengali Dalit women strata along with the issues of their triple marginalization.

Speaking and Writing the Anthropocene : In Conversation with Cecil Rajendra

Zainor Izat Zainal — 2024-06-30

Cecil Rajendra, nicknamed “The Lawyer-Poet”, is one of Malaysia’s most prominent literary writers. A lawyer by profession and a poet with over 20 published collections, his literary contributions were recognized with a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005. His poems have been featured in multiple media forms including magazines, journals, newspapers, BBC educational programs and textbooks all over the world. He has been expressing concerns about the destruction of nature long before it became a mainstream concern. Most of his environmental poems are found in Dove on Fire: Poems of Peace, Justice and Ecology (1987) and Rags & Ragas (2000), while some of his recent ones include Limericks & Lyrics from a Lockdown (2021), and “Half-Past Doomsday Hour” published in the Sunday Star in 2022. We find it important to interview him, having contributed so much to the local literary scene as well as many legal cases related to the environment. The present interview revolves around his literary career, the relationship between his works and the environment, his motivations and his views on the Anthropocene.

Postcolonial Ecology & The Cunning of Modernity: Iyat Ekhon Aranya Asil as a Critique of Postcolonial Modernity

Debajyoti Biswas — 2024-06-30

Abstract:
Anuradha Sharma Pujari’s Iyat Ekhon Aranya Asil is a powerful critique of the effect of modernity on postcolonial ecology. The novel explores the relationship between modern city life and the loss of animal habitat in the surrounding hills and forests. The unnamed narrator, a journalist by profession, has been strategically used as a mouthpiece of the author in the novel to critique the underbelly of modern society where the ease of modern life could be sustained only by exploiting land and labour. Drawing from the findings made by decolonial critics like Walter Mignolo and Anibal Quijano on the connection between global modernity, global colonialism, and capitalism, we argue that in a postcolonial context, this double exploitation can be perpetuated only through consent and political manipulation of a complicit public. An ambivalent emotional response by the protagonist in the novel exposes the complicit nature of the privileged class which thrives on such exploitation. In this essay, we shall explore this complex networking which entangles modern life, politics, and landless squatters in a symbiotic relationship that utterly disregards non-human lives. We further argue, in this essay, that emotions like eco-anxiety and solastalgia are foreshadowed by survival needs in postcolonial contexts.
Keywords: Solastalgia, Ecoanxiety, Ecopolitics, The Forest Wails, Assam, Colonial Modernity

Symbiogenesis, Biocapitalism, and Subversion in Tabish Khair’s The Body by the Shore

Binayak Roy — 2024-06-30

Tabish Khair’s The Body by the Shore explores the widening gulf between the Islamic and the non-Islamic world and the equation of the Muslims with a threatening germ in a futuristic setting. Symbiosis (be it mutualism, commensalism or even parasitism) subverts an essentialist concept of ‘individuality’; interprets evolution of life forms as a collaborative process and foregrounds the idea of the Gaia as very much a living being. Khair’s speculative post-pandemic novel narrative is a scathing attack on biocapitalism, xenophobia and the twin forces of profit and privatization. The technicalities of molecularization have reduced human life to a series of digital chromosomal codes facilitating innovative ways of commoditization of life and furthering biocapitalism. The dystopian vision articulated by Khair in the novel asks for an intervention from a different perspective. Stuart Murray’s reconceptualization of Foucault’s “open and dynamic” “self-self” relation would act as liberation from the reductionism of biotechnology and allow the human self to slough off the state of domination of biocapitalism and look forward to a zone of fluidity and creativity.

Aging, Alzheimer’s, and Precarity: Comprehending Vulnerabilities and Care Approaches in Select Indian Fictional Narratives

Debashrita Dey — 2024-06-30

Aging and late-life realities are significantly determined by the experience of impairments, which introduces vulnerabilities, potentially resulting in a sense of devaluation due to dependence and an increased likelihood of facing disadvantages or unmet needs. The requirement for care, evaluated through instances of age-entailed cognitive and functional limitations, underlines the vulnerability associated with later age. Examining aging through the interpretive lens of precarity aids in configuring what it means to live a marginalized life with disabling conditions in contexts related to care, assistance, and support. With epidemiological studies emphasizing the projected surge of Alzheimer’s in India, the intersectional paradigm of critical disability studies and precarity studies have proffered new approaches to interpret, produce, and narrativize knowledge related to age-specific diseases, their diagnosis, and their treatment. This paper focuses on examining how fictional deliberations - Anuradha Sharma Pujari’s Jalsobi: In the Shadow of Light (2018) and Avni Doshi’s Girl in White Cotton (2019) - configure precarity through the markers of frailty, vulnerability, and increased dependency in older Indian women with diminishing cognitive capacities. It engages with the experientiality of cumulative losses -memory, functionality, and agency during old age, attempting to create alternative discourses of care that can confront and respond to the underlying vulnerabilities of conditions like Alzheimer’s.

Precarious Oceans and Vulnerability: Micropolitics of Care in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef

Abhisek Ghosal — 2024-06-30

Inoperative grammatology of post(g)locality followed by the incremental desires of neoliberal elites to marketize abundant oceanic resources scattered across the world renders the oceans extremely vulnerable—an appalling phenomenon which at once lays bare the vulnerability of the oceans conditioned by the strands of ‘precariousness’ and at times calls for the actualization of ‘micropolitics of care’—an ethically sound exercise which seems to be able to hold the oceans back from being economically subjected to the predatory ‘faces’ of contemporary neoliberal precarity. In this context, Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef is critically taken up to examine the rapid disappearance of coral reefs along with the illegal marketing of endangered marine species like dolphin so as to make readers aware of how the ocean stands at risk and moreover to put literary emphasis on the enactment of ‘micropolitics of care’ which seems to be able to effectively take on the wicked designs of contemporary neoliberal precarity for the greater sake of planetary consciousness.

Precarious Lives of Rohingya Refugee Women Emerging as Caregivers: A Visual Analysis of the Refugee Webcomic I Am a Leader of My House

Rishav Bali — 2024-06-30

The paper offers a close analysis of the refugee webcomic titled I am a Leader of My House, produced online in 2021 by the non-profit organization PositiveNegatives in partnership with The New Humanitarian, to decipher the everyday struggle of Rohingya refugee women through the interaction of the two female protagonists, Romida and Hafsa whose roles as agentic survivors tend to transform the lives of other refugee women in the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp in Bangladesh. Drawing on Judith Butler’s concepts of “precarity” and “frames of recognition” the paper textually and visually examines the individual challenges they face, as women emerging in leadership roles against the cultural and neoliberal norms, to “care” for the vulnerable women and children in the camps. The gendered dimension adds another layer to the form of life already burdened with a precarious legal status as women’s reproductive health, maternal care, and the specific challenges they face are often overlooked. The paper argues for recognizing such challenges and assigning them more responsibilities which can be a strategic and empathetic response to address their specific needs while it is also a culturally sensitive approach considering the conservative cultural norms and restricted interactions between genders in the Rohingya society.

Foodocracy and the Politics of Radical Care in The Black Soil

Om Prakash Dwivedi — 2023-12-30

The paper examines the extractive forces that systematically erode the life conditions of the citizens of Perumalpuram village. Deprived of any rights, even the right to be identified as humans, the villagers are treated as wasted lives, good enough only to work without any monetary benefit, on the farms owned illegally by the village head, Sarkaraisamy, also known as the Master. Focussing on the food shortage and lack of affective bonds, the paper advocates a turn from governmentality to caremenatlity, the base of which is the creation, recognition, and promotion of foodocracy and networks of care. It identifies foodocracy as a reformative movement, exposing the structural inequity and disfranchisement and leading to enhanced vulnerability in Perumalpuram and the surrounding regions. That foodocracy should not be limited to this village but become a zeitgeist in the global fight for equal access to food is the central argument of this paper. That is to say, this paper underlines the need to make foodocracy a global movement for collective survival.

EDITORIAL Should I care about everyone else?

Susan Philip — 2024-06-30

SARE, Vol. 61, Issue 1 | 2024

EDITORIAL: Should I care about everyone else?

GUEST EDITORIAL: Faces of Precarity: Restructuring Care-mentality in Asia

Om Prakash Dwivedi — 2024-06-30

SARE, Vol. 61, Issue 1 | 2024

Guest Editorial: “Faces of Precarity: Restructuring Care-mentality in Asia”

K. Vaishali K. Vaishali, Homeless: Growing up Lesbian and Dyslexic in India. Hyderabad: Yoda Press. 2023. ISBN 978-93-92099-51-9.

Dwitiya Sarkar — 2024-06-30

What does it mean to be dyslexic and lesbian at the same time in a dysfunctional, unsupportive family in India? How does one confront both ableism and homophobia in a complex heteronormative society that always dismisses any “unconventional” traits and behaviors as deviant? Indian-born author and LGBTQ activist K. Vaishali's narrative reveals the dark, cruel, and repressive side of society by delving deeply into these issues, without worrying about adhering to political correctness. Using life-narrative as a tool, she exposes several myths, misconceptions, and also limitations of knowledge about children with dyslexia. When people in India talk about dyslexia, she says, the image of the stereotyped child from the 2007 highly acclaimed Bollywood film Taare Zameen Par pops into their heads, since what little we know about dyslexia comes from this one cult classic, which indicates our limited understanding of the phenomenon. Moreover, she reveals how she was kicked out of her own house due to her “unnatural” sexual preference from her own home: “I told my mother about my sexuality and from a wicked curse I lost the house, job, and girlfriend- I lost my Bombay life. Since then, I’ve been living out of my suitcase, like I am a fugitive on the run” (Vaishali 5).

Yaqin, Amina. Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani Urdu Writing. ISBN 9781785277566 (Anthem Press, 2022), 280 pages

Nukhbah Taj Langah — 2024-06-30

This book review focuses on Amina Yaqin, Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani Urdu Writing (Anthem Press, 2022). The book is a rare contribution to feminist studies in the South Asian context and offers a new perspective to feminist scholars. The book defies over-reliance on Western feminist theories to argue that the convoluted social and political context of South Asia demands a nuanced understanding and reframing of the theoretical frameworks.

Bernard Wilson and Sharmani Patricia Gabriel (Eds). Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age: Local, National, and Transnational Trajectories. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 398 pp. ISBN 978-981-15-2630-5.

Aneesh Barai — 2024-06-30

n/a

Prasanthi Ganapathy Ram. Nine Yard Sarees: A Short Story Cycle. Singapore: Ethos Books, 2024. 272 pp. ISBN 978-981-18-6035-5.

Tejash Kumar Singh — 2024-06-30

Precious little has been written on the Singaporean Indian diasporic life from a literary perspective. Writers such as Balli Kaur Jaswal have covered the Punjabi-Sikh diaspora, gleaning greater insights into the realities of a minority within a minority. Prasanthi Ganapathy Ram's Nine Yard Sarees adds onto this growing corpus by covering a multigenerational Tamil Brahmin family’s life, especially focusing upon the narratives and perspectives of Indian women across different time periods and spaces. Written across 1950 to 2019, Ram's short stories encapsulate the lived realities of nine women as they travel globally. Salient themes revolving the various Indian female perspectives are portrayed, such as migration and displacement, across others. Weaving together their interlinked stories in a richer portrayal of diaspora, Ram's strength lies primarily in her capturing of the nuances and complexities surrounding each female's perspective. Hence, her writing functions as a form of resistance against seeing the lived realities of females within the Indian diaspora in Singapore as a comfortable, homogeneous whole.

Weathering

Christian Jil Repalda Benitez — 2024-06-30

Short lyric poem meditating on "love... [and] uselessness of / its implications," considered from the scale of geological time, beside, for instance, a "boulder being itself on the face / of weathering."

3 Poems - Estuary of Mud, Petaling Street (茨厂街), 168 Noodles, Pudu

Chwan Shiuh Tan — 2024-06-30

These three poems are written with Kuala Lumpur in mind and specifically directed to Malaysia’s cultural, racial, and linguistic conflicts. “Estuary of Mud” is titled with a translation of the name of the capital, and it tries to depict that historically KL is a “muddy” place of migration instead of a “pristine” monoethnic and monolingual site.

“Petaling Street (茨厂街)” follows the concept from the previous poem but further narrows the theme to the hustle and bustle in Chinatown, KL. The decision not to have any punctuation hopes to recreate the breathlessness one experiences when visiting Petaling Street. The reason to use overlapping phrases is to show that boundaries are blurred and ambiguous in this grungy migrant town, which has turned from “Chinatown” to “Banglatown”, and make a point that migration and land ownership are transient.

“168 Noodles, Pudu” attempts to illustrate the poet’s observation of the city and its past. It also connects a migrant worker to the May 13 racial riot through the issue of language proficiency, which is a marker of identity conflicts. Although the city has undergone rapid modernisation, undealt traumas remain tense under the surface, thus creating a strange vulnerable atmosphere among its residents.

Bandar Sri Permaisuri

Soon Vin Lim — 2024-06-30

Poem