Abstract
This paper interrogates the quality and value of silence as resilience, located within liminal spaces in Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019). Structured as an informal graphic essay, Doab Dil presents ironic commentaries on ecology, nature, culture, cities and the countryside, history, fiction, work, sleep, insomnia, borders, popular culture, and the quest for meaning in life. In the process, Doab Dil combines text and drawing to construct a postmodernist intertextual mural of juxtaposed quotations, descriptions, and metaphysical reflection on the meaning and values of contemporary culture. At the points of these juxtapositions, liminal spaces are created that are characterized by a dense silence. The centrality of the liminal in the creative imagination of Doab Dil is evident in the title that signposts the fertile tract of land found at the confluence of two rivers. Recollecting Homi Bhabha on the liminal as a horizon of possibilities, this paper explores the different ways in which the poetic representation of liminality constructs spaces of resilience, which draw on the silence between confluent thoughts on the diverse themes of the work for critical reflection. How do these liminal zones of silence comment on the meaning and consequences of contemporary culture? What kinds of counter-values do they propose through their critical reflective silence? Through textual interpretation and literary criticism, this paper investigates the poetics and politics of possibilities in Doab Dil within liminality as spaces of resilience, and the role of silence as a representational strategy for a metaphysical commentary on reality.
Presenters
Nishevita JayendranAssistant Professor (Literature and Humanities), Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Liminality, Silence, Resilience, Representation, Poetics, Politics, Literary Criticism
