CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Anjum, Anika |
|---|---|
| Title | Kun Bidexi? / Kon Bideshi?: Narratives of Violence and Belonging in the Chaos of Nellie Massacre, 1983 |
| Summary | The story starts with a third-world woman in a village north of Nellie, Assam, who was simultaneously a citizen and a foreigner. Delving into the ambiguity of ‘third-world woman’, the multiplicity of her identities, and impossibility of her representation, this thesis examines how intersectionality as a conceptual framework can be utilised to deconstruct dominant narratives that present themselves as credible truths. It further explores how dominant discourses and interpretations produce a truth effect through tautological references and reiterations as well as through material manifestations. To do so, this thesis first reframes intersectionality as a property of particles existing in chaos within a complex system. Through a synthesis of postcolonial and feminist literature as well as concepts of dimension-reduction from mathematics, a conceptual framework is built on the axioms of multidimensionality, situatedness, power, and temporality. The framework makes a theoretical claim that interpretations are attempts to linearise chaos with a logic of order based on comparison, continuity, and causality, which produce a frame of reference for subsequent interpretations. In order to contextualise the framework, the thesis maps a prominent journalist’s interpretation of the Nellie massacre of 1983 where more women and children were thought to be killed than young men. The interpretation is deconstructed to reveal assumptions behind the clustering of the groups and the logics of order that linearise chaos of the past. Four alternative causal-effect chains leading to the same outcome are mapped in a complex system comprising socio-political components using an adaptation of backward induction method. The thesis accomplishes this through an exploration of narratives from survivors, perpetrators, local representatives, journalists’ reports, official statements, and eyewitness accounts. This exercise demonstrates that linear patterns identified in chaos are influenced by the dominant discourses that create a feedback loop. The role of power, both discursive and material, is emphasised in crowding out narratives that do not fit into dominant frames of reference. Furthermore, this thesis makes a case for actualising feminist emancipatory politics beyond the analysis of gender on two fronts: on a methodological level, by lending its tools for analysis of similarly ambiguous categories of ‘indigenous’ and ‘immigrant’, and on a practical level, by endeavouring to alleviate material deprivations, as logics of subjugation are maintained through a co-existence of rhetoric and material reality in a complex system. Finally, the thesis offers a reflexive note on the embeddedness of the researcher in the global systems of power operating within academia and frames of references that despite critical analyses continue to shape lived experiences. |
| Supervisor | Jones-Gailani, Nadia; Rajaram, Prem Kumar |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/anjum_anika.pdf |
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