Drishadwati BargiPostdoctoral Fellow

Drishadwati Bargi (PhD, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota) works on Dalit Literature and anti-caste cinema in the wake of Hindutva.

My project entitled Banality, Remediated; Dalit Visions in Times of Spectacular Majoritarianism examines the political possibilities of contemporary Indian Dalit Literature and anti-caste cinema in times of mediatized Hindu majoritarianism, a condition that has fundamentally altered democratic participation and cultural production through orchestrated mediation of the space of the political with that of the spectacle, with its totalizing, homogenizing and abstracting effect on the citizen.

My work can be found in The Journal of Narrative Theory, Economic and Political Weekly, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Studies, Cultural Critique and Voice of Dalit. 

1. “Why Should My Life be Sacrifice to One Man?” The paradoxes of Dalit Militancy in Malika Amar Shaikh’s memoir, I Want to Destroy Myself in the Journal of Narrative Theory. Fall 2023.
2. “When the critic stumbles: legal violence and its unacknowledged terrain in Chaitanya Tamhane’s film Court”, Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 53. Issue No. 23, 09 June, 2018.
3. Review of Shailaja Paik’s The Vulgarity of Caste (2022) in Journal of Feminist Theory and Performance September, 2023.
4. Review essay of Soumyabrata Choudhury’s: Ambedkar and Other Immortals. An Untouchable Research Program (2018). Navayana. Cultural Critique, University of Minnesota. 2022.