Swiss writer, painter and prostitute. The principal aim of his survey has been that of tracing the identity reappropriation path that has marked the life and, subsequently, the artistic expressions of the author. Starting with the principal instance in which Réal herself saw the matrix of the difficulties felt in recognizing her own physical and emotional individuality—namely the rigid interdiction toward sexuality imposed by her mother—he has identified and described the emergence of a complex and protean strategy of self-construction and affirmation, centred on the revindication of control over her own corporality and sexuality. In his study, Perri has largely analysed this gradual, and also violent, process of emancipation from a system of physical and psychological auscultation and sanction, that he has reconnected to the idea of ceremonial punishment theorized by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish. He has subsequently pointed out that, in order to release herself from the “cage” she felt to be trapped in, Grisélidis Réal has performed a concrete (and also textual) rejection of her social status (she was born in the cultivate and wealthy milieu of Swiss middle-class) and of all the moral values that characterized it, allocating her emotional and bodily self into the domain of abjection. Thus, Grisélidis Réal has conceived of herself—on the ashes of the renegade “native one”—a large and controversial axiological system, in which body and writing constitute a powerful device of intimate (and political) claim. The “Abject”, majorly represented by a borderless and feral idea of reality and a fetishized inclination for black men, is the antagonistic tool that the author has used to subvert the “white”, catholic and obscurantist narrative absorbed in the Swiss native context. The strategy of self affirmation of Grisélidis Réal, then, culminated in over thirty years of sex work, assumed as an act of self-determination that deserves social recognition and respect and, in the specific picture of Réal’s life and self-narration, as the ultimate way to be the “maîtresse” of a body on which, for years, a confining system of symbols had been engraved.
Non-citizens are a significant part of the contemporary population of Gulf Cooperation Council States. For instance, over 90 percent of the population in UAE and Qatar are emigrants primarily from neighbouring South Asian countries such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Pakistan. Such mass emigration has not only allowed for the rapid economic expansion of these Gulf countries, but at the same time they have also produced a number of cultural and socio-economic consequences for the Gulf states. Every year, the number of emigrants to the Gulf continues to rise. Why do so many seek expatriation; particularly, when the host country is partially hostile? More importantly, how do the emigrants disseminate information about their lives in the Gulf? How are these experiences registered in the literary fabric of the diasporic countries? Lack of institutional support from host and home countries contribute towards what Andrew Gardner calls “Structural Violence” that reveal a lack of emigrant agency. Using a representative novel, Benyamin’s Jasmine Days, winner of the inaugural JCB Prize in 2018, Priya Menon in Chapter 4 explores the bordered emigrant lives of different South Asian communities in the Gulf set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring.
The commoners of the Indian subcontinent, in their pristine domesticity and rural bliss had never believed in Partition which had been clamped on them in 1947 and again in 1971, in the name of religion. Lamenting over the loss of unified idyllic space, sensitive artists like Jibanananda Das in Bengal and Amrita Pritam in Punjab have often painted a nostalgic world in their poems. Emulating a tradition of seeking support as in the epics, poets such as Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Amrita Pritam have invoked and amalgamated the Bhakti and the Sufi saints like Lalon Shah and Waris Shah to appeal to the spirit of harmony. While these artistic productions have at best remained confined in urban, intellectual congregations, the Baul and Marafati songs and tradition still continue to be practiced among rural illiterates, in pockets of India, thus veritably challenging the rationale of ‘bordering’. Lalon Shah, particularly, born at Kushtia in Bangladesh (1772), continues to combat the divisive forces of caste, creed, gender and religion through his unnumbered songs and eclectic rituals practiced by his followers in both Bengals till today. His songs, handed down orally and practiced in ‘Akhras’ at Kushtia and Nadia discuss an amalgamation of beliefs derived from Islam, Vaishnavite, Tantric and Buddhist Sahajiya tradition, thus attacking the very principle of ‘neatly drawn boundaries’. Hounded down as heretics, these marginalized people continue to challenge societal and religious domination by congregating yearly at ‘Dolpurnima’ in Kushtia, Joydev Mela at Kenduli or Poush Mela at Shantiniketan to spread the message of ‘Manab Dharma’ or ‘the religion of humanity’. Seeking to understand Sri Ramakrishna’s belief in his ‘Kathaamrita’ that the ‘Sain’ or the Baul Guru is a person of supreme perfection, Chapter 5 attempts to trace the impact of the Baul and Marafati songs and practices in Bengal—in creating a microcosmic, yet alternative ‘eutopia’ (the good world) which had existed and continues to exist as ‘unified Bengal’, utterly rejecting the state constructed borders and boundaries. Sharmistha Chatterjee Srivastav makes us aware that this Baul tradition has in contemporary times become a mode of fashion and a fusion art. Her search, however, has avoided such pitfalls and concentrate on the original philosophical objectives and the praxis of the followers at the grass root level.
In Chapter 6, Amanda Rutherford and Sarah Baker look at how contemporary film and television continue to expand on themes of borders and walls within their narratives, creating ever-growing interest in popular culture. These storylines delve into cultural anxieties surrounding ideas of the threat of war and terrorism, alienation and isolation, consumerism and loss of individualism, as well as religion and apocalyptic events. Film provides a visual platform to explore these concerns by utilizing boundaries and walls as separators between that which is deemed to be the safe and secure, from the unknown ‘other’ in the form of zombies, infected animals or humans, foreign species or those considered to be of lower class or social standing. This chapter investigates the trope of boundaries and walls found in film and television such as The Colony (2016-), Game of Thrones (2011-), The Walking Dead (2010-2018), The Hunger Games (2012-2015), the Jurassic Park films (1993, 1997, 2001, 2018), Zoo (2015-2017), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), The Maze Runner (2014), Mortal Engines (2018) and others where the threat of separation is at the forefront of human existence. These examples from popular culture are utilized as a means to explore the advantage given to those behind the wall or separation divider, as well as to showcase the alienated, viral, disadvantaged or poverty stricken who are often left behind. These fears are teased out and recreated into several genres such as horror, science fiction, post-apocalyptic, thriller and dramas with many receiving huge success and fame. The physical boundaries and barriers are examined and interrogated how they manifest into modern representation for everyday contemporary society.
Although ‘prison show’ genres in recent years have increased portrayals of incarcerated women, criminal narratives, both in literature and media, have neglected women and their lived experiences. And sadly, such matters have received very less scholarly attention compared to the more rigidly academic contents. Chapter 6 attempts to analyze the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black (OITNB) that premiered in North America in 2013 and had the longest running span and portrayed the experiences of incarcerated women convicts. It is loosely based on a memoir of the same title by Piper Kerman (2010) in which she had documented her custodial experiences in a federal prison in Danbury Connecticut. OITNB had received massive viewership and critical acclaim and awards, and is often considered as an atypical feminist classic hiding as it does unsuspected depths of societal, racial, and gender complications, authenticated by the experiences of a white middle class woman convict.
The prison space in itself is an intriguing metaphor that combines the ideas of loss of freedom and innocence, enforced obedience, an ostracized condition marked by ambivalence between hope and despair. It is an assumed correctional home that fosters empathy, apathy, and violence. Functioning as it does under a panoptical gaze and its ruthless official agents, the prisoners’ life and lived experience is paradoxically both, a warrant and a travesty of the notions of border and order. This (post)structural binary of border/chaos; subject/state vis-à-vis legal order(ing) provides a suitable paradigm to read this visual text. And, this chapter does so by deploying the theoretical framework of Intersectional Feminisms to analyse its characters and contexts focusing on the cross-referentiality of the themes
