85. Abitha Balagopalan

Abstract 85
Abitha Balagopalan                                                                                                                      

Resistance and Resilience: Emergence of Self in the Selected Narratives of M.T Vasudevan Nair

Abstract

In this research paper, I explore the reconfigurations of the ideas of identity and resistance that characterise in selected narratives of M.T Vasudevan Nair. Even though the 1930s marked the confluence of various progressive movement and their literary representations in Keralam such as Thakazhi’s Thottiyude Makan (Scavenger’s Son), Kesavadev’s Odayyil Ninnu (From the Gutter) etc., M.T tried to throw some light on the complex yet unnoticed class struggles of the familiar middle class society that simultaneously extended and challenged the construction of modern subjectivities of Keralam.

This paper interrogates how these narratives illuminate the various transformations in Nair society such as the celebration of conjugal domesticity, the growing patrilineal sensibilities etc. that inflected the rhetoric of modernisation in Keralam in the post 1950s. In this light, this paper  views these narratives as important  landmarks in the aspects connected to identity formation  of Nairs that enabled them to participate in socio-political and cultural activities of Keralam by setting aside the differences of a matrilineal ‘otherness’ and the shackles of a tharavadu. Further, this paper also considers these narratives as sources of a more differentiated understanding of the logic of interplay between the doctrines of modernism and self-formation that remains a central and productive concept in the developmental discourses of Keralam.