Voices of Testimony and Resistance: Mapping Trauma in Dalit Women’s Writing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64137/31078729/IJLLH-V1I2P103Keywords:
Dalit Feminism, Ambedkarite Discourse, Narrative Form, Body Politics, Counter-History, Subaltern StudiesAbstract
This paper argues that Dalit women’s writing functions simultaneously as testimony, resistance, and an archive of caste–gendered trauma. Drawing on works by Bama, Baby Kamble, and Urmila Pawar, this examination explores how these authors transform their lived experiences into collective witness accounts that challenge dominant caste structures and patriarchal norms. The analysis suggests that Dalit women’s autobiographical writing does not operate within conventional literary frameworks but instead reworks life-writing into a testimonial mode that foregrounds communal suffering, generational memory, and political awakening. Integrating insights from trauma studies, feminist narratology, and Dalit discourse, the study demonstrates how these writers map trauma across spatial, bodily, and social registers. Their narratives ultimately reshape the understanding of trauma from an individual psychological event to a structural and collective condition rooted in caste oppression. Through voice, form, and ideological standpoint, Dalit women writers redefine the narrative self, turning testimony into an unmistakable gesture of resistance
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