How performing empowers the women ‘folk’ performers of Sundarban with a rare strain of resilience, but most importantly with economic stability and social recognition.
Author
Poulomi Das, Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Summary
This chapter unpacks the notions of dignity and agency that women ‘folk’ performers of Sundarban interrogate, embrace, and flout to mitigate and often transcend their class- and gender-oppressed realities. Using the lens of gender studies and the tool of ethnographic narrative enquiry, this chapter explicates their tales of journeying from poverty to sustenance.
Their tales could be interpreted as shameful or respectful according to the choice and socioeconomic position of the observer; but for them, these are lived experiences of resistance in the face of vulnerability and precarity. In spite of being subjected to discrimination and appropriation of all possible categories and sometimes being labelled as ‘loose’ and ‘available’ women, contrary to popular assumptions of social marginalization, these ‘deviant’ women exhibit pride and ownership of not only their skill of performing but also their bodies, both performing and sexual. Performing empowers them with a rare strain of resilience, but most importantly with economic stability and social recognition.
Published in: Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh: Caught up in the Culture of South Asia (1795–2010s), Manujendra Kundu (ed.), Pages 289 – 3031 January 2023
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