Elephant Trumpet: in/out of the black box

Abstract

This text weaves reflections on the (im)possibility of foregrounding caste-subalterns’, specifically Dalits’ experiences and imaginations of the Bengal Famine of 1943. This text is in conjunction with, next to, between, and in/out of the film You deny my living and I defy my death. The film has emerged as a result of a collaborative-performative workshop between two caste-subalterns, initiated and organized in the context of a PhD in Artistic Practice. Just like the workshop, the film is also animated by the desire to complicate the dominant representational realm ascribed to Dalits, which often is either essentialising or reductive. The film explores methodological and aesthetical approaches to go beyond the default imaginaries. Constructed across multiple modes, genres, fragments, and layers, this text aims to expand, extend, inflect, and build on the key themes explored in the workshop and the film. Some text precedes the workshop and film, some emerged during the process, and some have come afterwards. Mobilising iterative and assemblage-style writing, this text anchors itself in the Bengal Famine of 1943 to critically engage with ideas around ‘critical presence’ and the ‘representation’ of Dalits. The text also aims to explore notions around malnutrition, hunger, starvation, and famine as categories, ‘recovery and representation’ of caste-subaltern histories in the context of famine, opacity and affect as aesthetic choices, and collaborative practices as a method.