Language of Resistance and Aesthetic Appeal: Bama's Linguistic Activism - An Analysis of the Subaltern Aesthetics in Karukku and Sangati

Abstract

Beauty and truth have been conceived as the two most important criteria of literary creations. Aesthetics however holds a greater relevance to beauty rather than truth, assigning beauty and truth two antagonistic zones. In fact if art and literary art at that, takes the side of truth then it is supposed to be aesthetically unappealing. Subaltern literature like every other serious writing that evaluates power relations and oppression, is more leant towards truth and hence judged by populist ideas as being unaesthetic in the use of language and linguistic device. These judgements are most often produced by stating that the subaltern texts are uncouth and unrefined in their language, and shocking and rude in their diction.

But subaltern writers believe that aesthetics has nothing to do with flowery and imaginative language. All that matters in literary expression is involving the reader in the experience narrated in the text. Writers like Bama have broken all rules of linguistic expression and yet believe in an aesthetic connect with the reader. What writers like Bama have achieved is very relevant to Bharata Muni's Rasa theory as written by him in Natyasasthra. The present paper shall analyse the aesthetic appeal that Bama's work create with the reader and how it exemplifies the concept of beauty in its own right. Further the paper shall demonstrate the various linguistic nuances that Bama has used in her Karrukku and Sangati that has made her texts powerful authorities against hegemony and oppression, yet no less aesthetic.