Assistant Professor, Dimoria College, Khetri http://dimoriacollegedigitallibrary.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/85 2026-02-09T05:18:54Z 2026-02-09T05:18:54Z Choudhury, Jharna http://dimoriacollegedigitallibrary.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/89 2024-06-06T15:51:23Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The Struggle with Disease Taxonomy in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian Authors: Choudhury, Jharna Abstract: The root cause of the suffering of Yeong-hye denies all clear-cut medical nomenclatures in Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian. This paper discusses how heath institutions (in the context of the text) negate the aspects of cultural oppression, sexual trauma and power-play (referring to Michel Foucault) within the family structure while formulating a categorical taxonomy of a disease. In a constant struggle with anorexia, vegetal metamorphosis and parallel dream sequences, the cause-effect relationships in the illness of Yeonghye and her sister In-hye defers end-significations with plurality. Bringing in Susan Bordo, the hierarchy of gender in the control over food choices is discussed in the light of etiology of Yeong-hye’s disease, its “whatness”, and how medical institutions define her clinical condition.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Choudhury, Jharna http://dimoriacollegedigitallibrary.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/88 2024-06-06T15:51:23Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Study of Trauma and Transgression of the ‘Adult-child’ in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man Authors: Choudhury, Jharna Abstract: Bapsi Sidhwa’s characterization of Lenny Sethi in her fourth novel, the 1991 historical fiction IceCandy-Man, is formulated by the heterogeneous impact of the 1947 partition of India on the psychopathology of children. This paper observes how the trope of trauma problematizes the embodiments of childhood, contradicting its axiomatic paradisiacal nature. Parallel to the chaos of communal massacre, mass migration, dysfunctional parenting and the marginality of women and children, Lenny’s traumatic experience surpasses a singular-episodic trauma, and is laden with a multiplicity of source factors, thereby generating “complex trauma” (van der Kolk et al., 2007, p. 202). The child narrator acquires symptoms of irregular curiosity, hyper-vigilance, somatic complaints, fear, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and transgresses specific social norms. Lenny is a choreographed child, a problem-child, taxonomized as the ‘adult-child’ in the paper. Now, the question is whether to see the ensuing malfunction symptoms as a diagnostic criterion or adaptative human resilience? Drawing from Anjali Gera Roy’s concept of “intangible violence” (Roy, 2020, p. 43) the paper examines textual openings where the stages of childhood and adulthood deconstruct itself, approximates, and overlaps inside each other; taking cues from a relatively less-documented narrative angle of the child victim of partition.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Choudhury, Jharna http://dimoriacollegedigitallibrary.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/87 2024-06-06T15:51:22Z 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Postmodern/Post-mortem Human Body-Parts: Grotesque Subjects in The Melancholy of Anatomy Authors: Choudhury, Jharna Abstract: This paper critiques the literary representation of the human body as a “clean” slate, an organically wholesome subject by delving into the postmodern body-writing of Shelley Jackson’s short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy (2002). Building upon the idea of “metabody” or grotesque body-part as subjects, the flesh-characters, namely Egg, Sperm, Foetus, Cancer, Nerve, Phlegm, Blood, Milk and Fat, breaks apart from their marginality, and evolves in a rhizomatic structure, pressing their possibilities of manifold existence in a fantastical world. Through the lens of body studies critics (Mikhail Bakhtin and Elisabeth Grosz) and recent postmodern scholarship, the paper studies the performance of flesh-characters, creating a post-mortem pathology in literature. Jackson’s deviant approach re-maps the anatomy of the human body and engages in psychophysiological parodies, thereby disclosing social phobias pertaining to the repulsive sides of the human and feminine body. Metabodies are self-reflexive, postmodern grotesque, with micro-narratives; and their innovative representations give agency and consciousness to the usually discarded body-parts and fluids, thereby making the human body a non-normative and discursive text and context.

2021-01-01T00:00:00Z Choudhury, Jharna http://dimoriacollegedigitallibrary.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/86 2024-06-06T15:51:21Z 2022-10-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Telling Trauma: Resisting through Embroidery Stories Authors: Choudhury, Jharna Abstract: As a contemporary mode of subversion, the art of needlework has been revived from the category of the merely “aesthetic” to the expansive category of the “powerful.” Freestyle hand embroidery enables the socially disabled women of South Asia and other regions of the world to vent their trauma within the walls of their households. The select set of embroideries displayed here is expressionistic in art-style, presenting three micro-stories on bride burning, female foeticide, and Eve-teasing, as part of my personal project named “Embroidery Stories.”

2022-10-01T00:00:00Z