Laura Brueck, Freeman Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies and visiting assistant professor of Comparative Literature, presented a paper at the annual conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which took place from Oct. 12-14. Her paper "From Victim to Victor: Rape Revenge Fantasies in Dalit Women's Literature" argued that Dalit (ex-"untouchables" in India) women use written narrative to reject the role of "victim" in which they have regularly been cast(e), both in reality and popular imagination.
They do this through a series of distinct strategies that involve rewriting and re-envisioning dominant social scripts – those that define them as victims – with a focus on their bodies and their identities. In her presentation Brueck explored several examples of ways in which Dalit women writers working in Hindi subvert the narrative of victimhood imposed on them from above, envisioning instead alternative, triumphant life scripts. Brueck focused explicitly on the writing of Rajasthani Dalit writer Kusum Meghwal whose short stories rewrite the standard rape narrative in which the Dalit woman is the helpless prey of her attackers into one in which she is redrawn as the physical aggressor and victor.
Sexual violence perpetrated against Dalit women, particularly by upper caste men as a means of exerting a kind of terrorizing control over an entire community of Dalits, is more often than not an act which is performed in a public space. In her paper Brueck argued that Kusum Meghwal's stories act as a kind of alternative public (published) performance in which Dalit women may perform fantasy revenge scenarios, unlikely in real life, that allow them to enact a similar kind of institutional warning to their upper caste oppressors, or in the very least perform a cathartic release of anger and emotion only possible in the creation of a fantasy revenge narrative. She contends that Meghwal's stories provide the forum for what Deborah Willis (2002) has defined as the need for sexual violence victims' "enactment in front of an audience to secure a new, reempowered identity." Further Brueck explained that since Meghwal's stories are published and are therefore meant to be read by an audience, they are able to instill in that audience the power and subjectivity of the Dalit woman "victim," re-envisioning her rather as a "victor."
They do this through a series of distinct strategies that involve rewriting and re-envisioning dominant social scripts – those that define them as victims – with a focus on their bodies and their identities. In her presentation Brueck explored several examples of ways in which Dalit women writers working in Hindi subvert the narrative of victimhood imposed on them from above, envisioning instead alternative, triumphant life scripts. Brueck focused explicitly on the writing of Rajasthani Dalit writer Kusum Meghwal whose short stories rewrite the standard rape narrative in which the Dalit woman is the helpless prey of her attackers into one in which she is redrawn as the physical aggressor and victor.
Sexual violence perpetrated against Dalit women, particularly by upper caste men as a means of exerting a kind of terrorizing control over an entire community of Dalits, is more often than not an act which is performed in a public space. In her paper Brueck argued that Kusum Meghwal's stories act as a kind of alternative public (published) performance in which Dalit women may perform fantasy revenge scenarios, unlikely in real life, that allow them to enact a similar kind of institutional warning to their upper caste oppressors, or in the very least perform a cathartic release of anger and emotion only possible in the creation of a fantasy revenge narrative. She contends that Meghwal's stories provide the forum for what Deborah Willis (2002) has defined as the need for sexual violence victims' "enactment in front of an audience to secure a new, reempowered identity." Further Brueck explained that since Meghwal's stories are published and are therefore meant to be read by an audience, they are able to instill in that audience the power and subjectivity of the Dalit woman "victim," re-envisioning her rather as a "victor."
