Abstract 13: Veena R Nair
LACANIAN READING OF DISSENT IN
FOLKTALES
The readers of
folklore frequently read the idea that folklores are not for mere
entertainment, but they are means to attain the substituted gratification of
their repressed impulses. It is clear that the surface text is often plane and
appears as make-belief stories, but an analysis of the subtexts which rewrite
the main texts may reveal numerous patterns of dissent – dissent to the
established social system. The subtext protests, satires and fulfils the wishes
of the folk under the veils of fantasies. In this paper I propose an analysis
of folktales with the help of Lacanian concepts of fundamental lack, desire,
Other and the Law of the father by taking A. K. Ramanujan’s collection of
folktales entitled Folktales from India
as the primary text for interpretation. My paper is a reading of folktales as
the writing of the desires of the folk.
It tries to find out how the fundamental lack and desire get converted
as the realm of the Other and Name-of-the-Father change, how the people protest
against the Law, which is the commutation of the Name-of-the-Father, and how
they try to fulfil this through their ornamented fanciful tales which Lemaire
calls “the wanderings of true desire caught in the nets of signifier” (170).
The paper will be analyzing the subtexts of protest against the prohibition of
social norms/system – prohibition of incest, class and gender.
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