Why all the Fuss about Purity?:

Un/Touch-ability and the Paradox of Hygienic Bodies

Authors

  • Subro Saha

Abstract

 

Focusing on the question of untouchability and how a discourse of hygiene comes to justify it in the recent times, the paper attempts a brief genealogy tracing the linking of caste and the concept of hygiene. Trying to open up the entanglements that enable such linking, the paper goes deeper into the issues of sedimentation and embodiement that enable such continuity of caste discrimination. With such an approach the paper presents caste as a ghost and thus engages further on the contingencies haunting any attempt to theorize a ghost. It is herein that the paper calls for the urgency to engage more critically with the idea-matter embrace (instead of seeing them as detached) that constitute the elementary aspects of practicing caste: touch, purity and body.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Subro Saha

Subro Saha is presently working as an ICON PhD Fellow at Utrecht University, Netherlands. He is also associated as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Amity University Kolkata. Working in the areas of materiality, body and caste, he has delivered in the recent past many plenary talks in universities like University of Zurich, Utrecht University, and University of Malta. Some of his recent writings have been published by Routledge, Malta University Press, Hyderabad University Press, among others.

Downloads

Published

2021-11-09

How to Cite

Saha , S. (2021). Why all the Fuss about Purity?:: Un/Touch-ability and the Paradox of Hygienic Bodies. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 6(1), 37–51. Retrieved from https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/117