This book re-thinks the literary and social worlds of Mahasweta Devi, the prolific and influential writer and social activist, in connection to her praxis. It brings into focus Devi’s preoccupation with the human, nature and life, and unwritten or distorted histories that underline her poetics of translating resistance in terms of a radical alterity.
The defining feature of Devi’s writings is the position she adopts in defence of the human, questioning the nature of the ‘abject’ in her discourse on the oppressed. Essays in this volume focus on her subversive retellings from the Mahabharata, the political aspects of translation/adaptation of her works in literature, cinema and visual arts and comparative readings of her works by women authors from the Global South as well as the Indian diaspora. They examine her early publications, her writings for children, and the notion of aesthet(h)ics, i.e., ethics and/in aesthetics, as a gesture to pave forward a discourse on liberation and social justice that remains a challenge for the world.
The book will be of significant interest to scholars and researchers of postcolonial and decolonial studies, critical translation and adaptation studies, comparative literature, the visual arts, myth and folklore studies, gender and sexuality studies, caste and ethnicity studies, culture studies, ethics in/and aesthetics, activism studies, democratic and indigenous rights discourse, South Asian studies and Global South studies.
Table of Contents:
List of Contributors. Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Poetics of Translating Resistance: Mahasweta Devi in Defence of the Human I. Translating the Wor[l]d of Mahasweta Devi’s Writings 1. Many Other Tongues — Translating Plurality: Mahasweta Devi 2. Engaging with the Representation of the Subaltern in Select Short Stories by Mahasweta Devi in English Translation 3. Mahasweta Devi’s “Teer” translated as “The Arrow” II. Subversive Retellings from Mahābhāratam 4. Retelling of the Epics in Mahasweta Devi’s short stories: A Study of “The Five Women”, and ‘“Kunti and Nishadin” 5. Reading Mahasweta Devi’s “Kunti and the Nishadin” as a Political Transcreation of the Mahabharata III. Visual Aesthetics and the Politics of Translation and Adaptation 6. The Politics of Visual Aesthetics and Resistance in Contemporary Picture Books by Mahasweta Devi 7. Photographs, Fame, and Fantasies: Performative Self-contradiction and Gangor, Italo Spinelli’s Film Adaptation of Mahasweta Devi’s “Behind the Bodice” 8. Politics of Transcreation: A Study of Select Cinematic Adaptations of Mahasweta Devi IV. Reading in Comparative Frames 9. Writers as Activists: A Comparative Study of Mahasweta Devi and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 10. Exploring Gendered Subalternity in Bessie Head’s “A Collector of Treasures” and Mahasweta Devi’s After Kurukshetra V. On the Poetics of Translating Resistance 11. Ethical Literary Experiments: Thinking with Devi about Aesthet(h)ics of Liberation 12. The WOR[L]D of Mahasweta Devi and her Poetics of Translating Resistance. Index.
