Undecidable Spaces:

Rethinking Caste and the Technologies of Abandonment in Manoranjan Byapari

Abstract

Organization of space in a modern urban locale is apparently secular and unmotivated by any divine or religious principal. Yet it always functions on the basis of exclusion. Simultaneously the dread of the excluded returning to haunt the stability of the city structures its organization of space. In this paper we shall see how the pre-modern system of Casteism has similarities with as well as difference from the modern democratic system of governance across the world and its distinct form of abandonment. It shall also be suggested how abandonment becomes an indispensible technique through which a governmental apparatus comes into existence both in pre-modern Caste Society in Indian subcontinent as well as modern democracy. This work shall focus on Bengali Dalit author Manoranjan Byapari, coming from Namashudra, a Dalit subcaste in Bengal to show how autobiographical form of writing resurfaces the quintessential question of caste pushed back in modern normative arrangement of space.