Social Sciences & Humanities Open 10 (2024) 100914

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Regular Article

Female body-corporeal as both the aetiological site and the site of

resistance: Conceptualizing manic depression in Jerry Pinto’s Em and the
Big Hoom
Sayan Das , Md Moshabbir Alam *, Sandip Sarkar
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at NIT, Raipur, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The hegemonic discourse of normalcy perpetuates unfavourable portrayals of mental illness; it distorts our un­
Body-corporeal derstanding of the sufferer’s existential and affective experiences. However, mental illness is a multifaceted
Gender scripting phenomenon; it necessitates a holistic understanding of how an individual’s identity and personhood are
Abject
emplaced at the intersection of the diverse sociocultural conditions. The article conceptualizes manic depression
Self-harm
as a complex interplay of the corporeal, cognitive, and cultural factors in Jerry Pinto’s critically acclaimed
Resistance
contemporary novel Em and the Big Hoom (2012). Jerry Pinto is a Mumbai-based Goanese Indian author who
embarks on exploring the intricacies of psychological vulnerabilities and draws heavily from his personal ex­
periences to write poignant, humane and empathetic stories. Em and the Big Hoom documents the narrator’s
reminiscences of his late mother, Em or Imelda’s experiences of mood swings, paranoid delusions, freakish
breakdowns, and psychiatric treatments. It scrutinizes extracts of Em’s diary notes, letters, and past conversa­
tions to exhibit how a woman succumbs to abjection due to socio-cultural expectations of sex, pregnancy, and
childbirth and eventually resorts to self-harm. The article projects the female body-corporeal as both the
aetiological site and the site of resistance; while phallocentric cartography of the female body engenders
abjection, manifestations of abjection at the corporeal level formulate tropes of resistance. The article challenges
the phallocentric tendency to pathologize deviant body-behaviour motifs in women, contributing to the
expanding corpus of phenomenological knowledge on pathologized female subjectivities.

1. Introduction of awe, fear, scorn, and humour. Roth and Hogan opine that “hegemonic
discourse selects, orders, or excludes certain versions of reality in its
1.1. Theoretical background effort to organize the world according to its own purposes” (p. 136).
While reflecting upon the cultural logic of parenthesising the mentally
Representation mediates and constructs the knowledge we consume ill, Foucault says, “madness had become a thing to look at: no longer
(Mitchell & Mitchell, 1995, p. 188). In Representation: Cultural Repre­ monster inside oneself, but an animal with strange mechanisms, a
sentations and Signifying Practices (1997), Stuart Hall notes that no living bestiality from which man had long since been suppressed” (p. 66). From
or non-living entity has any pre-given true essence; their representations distorted and sensationalized visualisation of psychological vulnerabil­
reproduce and reify perceptions about them (p. 3). Stock patterns of ities to psychiatric labelling, all snatch away the narrative agency from
negative stereotypes of mental illness perpetually circulated in popular the sufferers who traverse the travails of mental illness and lead them
culture (Wahl, 1992, p. 343; Wilson et al., 1999, p. 232; Wolff et al., towards a stoic acceptance and internalisation of shame.
1996, p. 183) as well as medical discourses (Gilman, 1996, p. 24; Hin­ However, mental illness is not simply an assimilation of pathological
shaw, 2007, p. 211), reinforce the stigma and legitimize the discrimi­ markers; rather, its aetiology and manifestation have multidimensional
nating attitude towards the sufferers. Since mental illness implies aspects. It demands a holistic conceptualisation of how an individual is
navigation through alternate realities, the ableist rhetoric of normalcy affected by the surrounding sociocultural conditions and responds in
dehumanisingly relegates the sufferers into pathologized deviant objects that specific context. In his radical (1977) polemic, George Engel

* Corresponding author. A P J Kalam Hall, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at National Institute of Technology, Raipur, 492010, Chhattisgarh, India.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Das), [email protected] (M.M. Alam), [email protected] (S. Sarkar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2024.100914
Received 9 February 2024; Received in revised form 22 March 2024; Accepted 2 April 2024
Available online 9 April 2024
2590-2911/© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
S. Das et al. Social Sciences & Humanities Open 10 (2024) 100914

exposed the inadequacy of the traditional reductionist biomedical model existence, and the fear and grandeur of love. Now, it has transformed
in providing a holistic understanding of any illness condition, “it leaves into a book that numerous individuals facing psychological vulnerabil­
no room within its framework for the social, psychological, and ities, along with their companions and relatives, seek for understanding
behavioural dimensions of illness” (p. 130). To bridge this methodo­ and comfort, as well as to alleviate their sense of invisibility and isola­
logical gap, Engel introduced an alternative biopsychosocial model that tion. In Em and the Big Hoom (2012), an unnamed son reminisces about
will “also take into account the patient, the social context in which he his late mother, Em or Imelda’s experiences of manic depression and
lives, and the complementary system devised by society to deal with the reflects upon the complex family relationships and domestic dynamics
disruptive effects of illness, that is, the physician role and the health care that developed centring around her psychological vulnerabilities. Two
system” (p. 132). Engel intended to expand the contours of prevalent sets of narratives are accommodated parallelly in the novel. One is from
diagnostic approaches by shifting the myopic focus unequivocally cen­ the son’s point of view, which either vaguely searches for reasons behind
tred on the biological to the interference of cognitive and socio-cultural his mother’s uncanny behaviour and freakish breakdowns or offers a
factors as well (Peter & Venkatesan, 2021, p. 25). The biopsychosocial confession of shame for having a mentally unstable mother. And the
framework leaps past the objective pathological facts and offers to other is narrated through Em’s letters and diary notes that attempt to re-
employ an all-encompassing theoretical lens, inclusive of the subjective legitimize her own subjective existential and emotional experiences of
emotional and existential experiences of mental illness. Adhering to this paranoia, delusions, and episodes of mood swings. Extracts from Em’s
approach is the prerequisite for undermining a homogenized under­ writings try to give voice to her symptoms and vocalize resistance
standing of the cognitive of any individual. It lays the pathway to ach­ against the narrativisation of female consciousness through the phallo­
ieve a multifactorial analysis of the aetiology of mental illnesses; it centric gaze. They emphasize the insidious effects of gender scripting of
critically theorizes varying expressions of psychological vulnerabilities the female body and exhibit how she suffered from severe anxiety about
from myriad non-medical, cultural and phenomenological vantage socio-cultural expectations of sex, pregnancy and childbirth, often
points. leading her to resort to self-harm and suicidal attempts. The novel opens
a gateway to a critical understanding of how phallocentric cartography
2. Content background of the female body affects the female consciousness, and eventually, its
effects are manifested at corporeal levels.
The present article focuses on the imagination of mental illness,
specifically in the Indian context. At the very outset, it gives an overview 3. Purpose of the study
of how the trajectory of its representation in Indian Writing in English
has undergone a continuous paradigmatic shift. Indian Writing in En­ The present article conceptualizes manic depression as a complex
glish has always pushed aside mental illness as a taboo topic while interplay of the corporeal, cognitive, and cultural in Jerry Pinto’s criti­
considering it as a subject matter of narration. Few recent texts in the cally acclaimed work of fiction, Em and the Big Hoom. The article frames
last two decades have interrupted the precedented trajectory and the female body-corporeal as both the aetiological site and the site of
prioritized mental health issues as valid subject matters, eliciting diverse resistance. It demonstrates how gender scripting compels a woman to
conversations, discussions, and interpretations. Texts like Family Matters experience her body as an abject, and manifestations of abjection at the
(2002) dealing with Parkinson’s disease, Weight Loss (2006) based on corporeal level formulate tropes of resistance. The article challenges the
geriatric complexities, Sepia Leaves (2006) representing Schizophrenia, phallocentric tendency of pathologising any deviance from the pre­
Em and the Big Hoom (2012) reminiscing experiences of manic depres­ scribed feminine body-behaviour ideals; it contributes to the expanding
sion, Our Nana was a Nutcase (2015) depicting Dementia, and few others corpus of phenomenological knowledge on manic depression among
have problematized the aetiological as well as diagnostic approaches women.
surrounding mental illness and the issues of caregiving. In the intro­
duction to Dementia and Literature: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Magi­ 4. Female body-corporeal as an aetiological site
ness notes that mental illness narratives can go “beyond what we know,
presenting us with an other-world of some sort – a culture, a time, a set 4.1. Theorizing abject
of characters, a set of values or points of view we are not familiar with,
often a world we have conceived of as marginal or hidden” (p. 10). Etymologically, abject originates in abicere, a Latin word with two
Stepping into the unexplored realms can engender empathy or ethical morphemes – ab-, meaning away, and jacere, meaning to throw. A Dic­
sensitivity through destabilising prevalent socio-cultural norms and tionary of Critical Theory defines abject as a critical concept in the cul­
hegemonies. Contemporary works of fiction in the expanding corpus of tural milieu-
IWE opt for understanding the multifaceted affective realities of mental
that which disturbs the self by provoking an uncanny feeling of
illness by providing a unique insight into the emplacement of an in­
disgust, fear, loathing, or repulsion. The abject is the excessive
dividual’s self and personhood at the intersection of multiple socio-
dimension of either a subject or an object; it is that which cannot be
cultural factors (Nayar, 2018, p. 148).
assimilated—i.e., we cannot make it part of ourselves. The paradox
The present article chooses Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (2012)
of the abject is that it is simultaneously outside or beyond the subject
to analyse the interior scaffolding of manic depression and how the
and a product of the subject.
phenomenon of mental illness shares an intricate bond with an extensive
array of socio-cultural factors. Jerry Pinto, an Indian novelist residing in In her ground-breaking work Powers of Horror (1982), Julia Kristeva
Mumbai, delves into the intricate aspects of human psychology and pulls conceptualizes the birth of abject borrowing essentially from Lacanian
inspiration from his encounters to craft emotional and compassionate psychoanalysis. According to Kristeva, abjection pre-figures the mirror
narratives. In 2012, Jerry Pinto released his first novel, Em and the Big stage during the psychic development of an infant (Arya, 2017, p. 48).
Hoom, which was inspired by his personal experience of cohabitating Institutionalization of the superego by the symbolic order, underpinned
with a mother suffering with manic depression. It resonated with by phallocentric doctrines, results in excluding maternal object and
numerous readers, including those who had a loved one affected by a eventually transmuting it into abject (Davis, 1995, p. 5). The abject, in
mental illness or physical disability. A few of these readers confided turn, threatens to destabilize the paternal symbolic from its exile. Abject
their stories to Jerry and consented to divulge them to the public. A Book “has only one quality of the object—that of being opposed to I” (Kris­
of Light (2016) compiles these distressing yet poignant and even teva, 1982, p. 2) and it embodies what is “thrown out” (Davis, 1995, p.
empowering narratives—exploring the vulnerability and tremendous 8) by the symbolic and regarded as “unclean and improper” (Kristeva,
resilience of the human psyche, the desolation and unforeseen beauty of 1982, p. 2) like –

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Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung. The spasms assigned the role of sex toy for her husband. Years later in a conversion
and vomiting that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that with her son, Em sarcastically said that the same society which projects
thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, sex as sacrilegious and valorizes chastity tries to compel a woman to
and muck. The shame of compromise, of being in the middle of have sex with her husband in the marriage bed even if she doesn’t wish
treachery. The fascinated start that leads me toward and separates to consummate- “Close the door and be his wife” (p. 158). She recalled
me from them (Kristeva, 1982, p. 2). that in her times, it was pretty usual for a wife to get abused and tortured
if she failed to fulfil a husband’s expectations- “In those days, it wasn’t
Now, it must be mentioned that the present article endeavours to
even a problem if he gave you a slap or two. Everyone gets a couple,
provide a unique insight into abjection in the context of manic depres­
they’d say. They don’t know their own strength, that’s why he broke
sion among women rather than focusing on Kristevan psychoanalytic
your jaw, how else is he to make sure you respect him, what else can a
theorisations. Using Megan Warin’s feminist appropriation of abject
man do…” (p. 158).
theory, the article explores how socio-cultural expectations of sex,
Butler (1990) says that “gender is a process or action”; “it should be
pregnancy, and childbirth from the female body can engender abjection
considered as a repeated behaviour” (p. 3). A body slowly adopts the
and worsen mental health conditions in women. In Abject Relations:
gender by performing a set of behaviours that are socio-culturally ex­
Everyday Worlds of Anorexia (2010), a phenomenological study of
pected. Emphasising the word ‘become’ in Beauvoir’s (1956) famous
women’s eating disorder experiences, Megan Warin shifts from Kriste­
postulate, “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman” (p. 301), it can
va’s location of abjection “in the imaginary, psyche, and language to the
be suggested that one becomes a woman by continuously playing and
everyday practices and terms of sociality” (p. 5). By imbibing the epis­
performing feminine roles and behaviours. Femininity is no static
temological frameworks of the social construction of self, other, and
essence of a body but rather a performance a body is expected to exist
relatedness, Warin reappropriates Kristeva’s abjection as a gendered
through. In a phallocentric society, such as that of India, becoming a
experience. Offering a unique ingress into the female corporeal subjec­
wife adheres to the performance of specific gender roles, of which a
tivity and consciousness, she highlights that the role of abjection isn’t
fundamental one is sexually gratifying own husband. In a male centric
deployed simply through language, but practiced through gendered society, as Chambers notes, “sexuality is deeply hierarchical” and in
bodies; the simultaneous hungering for and spitting out of foods; the marriage contract that is undergirded by structures of inequality, hier­
physical retching of vomiting and purging; the erasure of sexual archical sex often becomes “the source of rape, abuse and distress”
difference; the protection of bodies from contamination; elaborate (Chambers, 2005, p. 330). The hegemonic institution of marriage ad­
cleansing routines (both internally and on the margins of bodies); vocates an “inherently inequitable contract” between the spouses
and the desire to be clean, empty, and pure (p. 116) “through seeming pleasure and consent to solidify material subordina­
tion, setting the norms of consensual behaviour in other domains” (Basu,
Warin states that women often experience anxiety, disgust, and
2011, p. 201). In a marriage contract, both men and women are allowed
repulsion about their body-corporeal because of physiological functions
to participate, but there is always a disparity in the share of autonomy,
like menstruation, consummation, pregnancy, and childbirth, which she
decision making and access between the two genders. Okin (1989) states
lists as “dangers associated with being female (implicitly female sexu­
that “gender-structured marriage involves women in a cycle of socially
ality)” (p. 17). These are “construed as disgusting and too close for
caused and distinctly asymmetric vulnerability” (p. 138). Men dominate
comfort” (p. 17), and women perceive their bodies as inherently abject
over women; men enjoy sexual access to women’s body till the marriage
for being “‘out of place,’ ’dirty and polluted,’ ‘dangerous,’ ‘disgusting,’
pact is valid. Pateman (1988) argues that a marriage pact can mutate use
‘diseased,’ ‘contaminated,’ ‘soiled,’ and ‘impregnated with evil’” (p.
of sexual property into the use of a person; through marriage wife’s
137). It compels women to suffocate “within the realm of uneasy cate­
personhood is diminished into a puppet which can be accessed for sexual
gories” and their bodies “to hide, to run away from its own cringing self”
enjoyment by the husband by his wishes. Marriage superficially as a
(Kroker & Kroker, 1987, pp. 131–132).
social contract may seem a story of duty and bondage, but underneath it
is a sex contract which follows a narrative of subordination (Pateman,
5. Gender scripting and abjection
1988, p. 172).
When Em addressed the letter to her fiancé interrogating about
According to Imogen Tyler (2013), abject as an embodiment
“woman’s rights”, she enveloped it with a tile “contract”. The beginning
encompasses
line of the letter, “I know we have agreed to pledge our troth & etc.”,
all that is repulsive and fascinating about bodies and in particular which follows a didactic enquiry about the preservation of “woman’s
those aspects of bodily experience which unsettle bodily integrity: rights” in marriage, reflects Em’s awareness about the duplicity of
death, decay, fluids, orifices, sex, defecation, vomiting, illness, marriage pact and its potential to relegate her into a sexual property of
menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth (p. 5). her husband. For Em, sexual access to her body, even in the absence of
her consent, was like an unwanted encroachment into her corporeal
Em or Imelda succumbed to an abysmal pit of fear, disgust, and self-
territory. According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), a body gets
loathing due to the burden of fulfilling socio-cultural expectations of
“operate [d on] by coding and territorialization” as stratification “pro­
femininity, including sex, pregnancy, and childbirth. Phallocentric
ceed[s] simultaneously by code and by territoriality” (p. 40). Beco­
cartography of Em’s body-corporeal incurred a loss of logos and
ming-woman is a process of mapping, coding and stratifying the female
engendered abjection or “the darkness that reigns at the heart of the
body-territory in terms of phallocentric prescription of gender roles.
human condition” (Arya, 2017, p. 59).
No essential or natural human body pre-exists which is “amputated,
After the engagement, Em addressed a letter to Augustine or Big
repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is
Hoom, where she conveyed her fear about the physical consummation of
carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and
marriage and loss of corporeal agency. She stated clearly that she might
bodies” (Foucault, 2003, p. 217). In the absence of any a priori natural
be fond of their “necking and petting” (Pinto, 2013, p. 155) but not
sex difference, it is the socio-cultural scripting of gender through which
“much interested in the whole business of copulation” (p. 154).
“systematic effect of sexual division is perpetuated” (McNay, 1992, p.
Furthermore, she asked her fiancé whether marriage allows a husband to
33). Being the other half of a male, symbolic of “the active, strong and
own his wife’s body and engage in sexual intercourse for gratification
moral half of a human whole” (Bailey, 2002, p. 99), a female is
without her consent- “So: what if I don’t take to the thing? How often
conceived as “literally a receptacle for the desires of the male” (King,
will you expect it? Will I be within my rights to refuse?” (p. 155). Em was
2004, p. 31). Em’s use of the phrase “business of copulation” for the
terrified of the possibility that with marriage, she would be unwittingly
physical consummation of marriage highlights this giver

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(male)/receiver (female) transaction model that undergirds the line of distinction between public and private (Fraser, 1997, p. 115), and
penile-vaginal intercourse, one of the mandatory prerequisites for the later, the male-dominated culture considers abortion as a private choice,
fulfilment of a marital relationship in an androcentric society. To Em, stripping it of its social, cultural, political and economic necessity
penile penetration was the intrusion of the alien (phallic) into her (Himmelweit, 1988, p. 40; Charles, 2000, p. 164; Petchesky, 2021, pp.
vaginal aperture, the gateway of the female body-territory. Kristeva 6–7)). Though a woman bears a foetus in her uterus, the corporeity of
(1982) explains that abjection happens when something “disturbs the foetus is socio-culturally imagined as an autonomous other and
identity, system, order [and] does not respect boundaries, systems [or] separated from the female body. Rather than emphasising its status as
rules” (p. 4). Provision of sexual access to the wife’s body at the expense equivalent to the bearer, foetus-centred imagination exhibits quintes­
of the wife’s consent is the denial of a woman’s corporeal boundary; the sential masculine autonomy. Rothman says that “the foetus in utero has
act of trespassing by the phallic consequently unsettles, destabilizes and become a metaphor for ‘man’ in space, floating free, attached only by
fragments the female body-corporeal order. Em’s urge to know is the the umbilical cord to the spaceship” (Petchesky, 2021, p. xi). Though
anticipation of the spectrum of disgust, fear and self-loathing that arises right bearers, yet women are deprived of holding the agency to decide
out of the denial of her own corporeity by the alien other. whether they want to nurture a foetus within their corporeal territory.
Marital consummation follows the sociocultural expectation of . The anticipation of motherhood embedded in the onset of preg­
childbirth. In an androcentric society, such as that of India, a wife be­ nancy often unsettles the corporeal identity (Teixeira et al. 142–148).
comes a tool of sexual gratification for the husband and then is expected When Em addressed the foetus with pronouns like ‘them’ and ‘You’, she
to be the incubator of the heir of his family. In developing nations like dragged a line of dissociation between her maternal body as the subject-
India, families are mostly male-dominated, and women are treated as bearer and the foetus in her womb as the object-emplaced as if the foetus
mere reproducers of progenies. Infertile or childless women are often is another corpus within a corpus. Although, the subject-object relation
stigmatized in Indian society, and failure to become a mother has a lot of is not unilateral but rather bilateral. Considering Jessica Benjamin’s
negative implications on the mental health of Indian women (Widge, (2013) “split complementary”, it can be suggested that Em’s
2002, p. 61). And if even a woman succeeds in giving birth, she hardly body-corporeal entered into a dialectical relation with the foetus’
holds any agency to have any say in family planning (Jayalakshmi et al. body-corporeal. While from Em’s subject position, the foetus in her
120–121). According to Sreedevi (2000), in Indian society, “child­ womb had a parasitic identity that would derive sustenance from her
bearing remains a complex phenomenon and women’s bodies often body, Em’s body-corporeal also acquired a target host-object identity in
become pawns in the struggle among the individual, family and state” terms of the foetus. Em’s urge to “shake those little mites from their
(p. 24). Not only are women exhausted of autonomy of decision-making moorings” was engendered out of her maternal body’s uncanny expe­
regarding what mostly concerns their bodies, but even their well-being rience of objectification-abjectification through which her actual self or
is constantly ignored in the overall health care system. While a matter of personhood got jeopardized as well as reified. Growth of an alien
treating infertility, the female body is often targeted, but in contrast, corpus-object, as well as the possibility of objectification of her own
when it concerns reproductive health and pre and post-natal mental womb, threatened the corporeal order of Em, and she entered a stage of
well-being of women, healthcare services hardly take any consideration liminality where paradoxically ambiguity became the unequivocal sta­
(Presser, 1997, p. 303). ble point of her identification (Carson, 2020, pp. 6–7).
In the chapter “Someone turned on a tap”, the narrator recalls a
conversation with his mother in which she explained how she used to 6. Female body as the site of resistance
devise tricks to abort and end her pregnancies-
6.1. Theorizing self-harm
‘I gave them straight out of my womb,’ she explained.
[…] Since the last century, the phenomenon of self-harm has become an
enthralling as well as highly contested topic of investigation for a
‘Abortions? No, what do you take me for? I’d just climb down five
varying range of disciplines, from medical to social sciences. However, it
stairs and jump six.’
continues to be a taboo topic, and perpetrators of self-harm often
‘Jump down the stairs?’ confront repugnant and negative attitudes in society. Self-harm is an
embodied experience, and its “embodied, messy, bloody and fleshly”
‘Six steps and land with a thump, six times, to shake those little mites
(Chandler, 2010, p. 30) aspects problematize the relational dimensions
from their moorings.’
between human beings and society. Entitlement of humans as a rational
She turned to Susan. being and extreme fetishization of self-restraint or control undermines
the irreducible uncanniness of corporeal choice, action and agency
‘But if you get knocked up, you come and tell me and I’ll come with
(Steggals, 2015, p. 142). Self-harm is always put under a moral evalu­
you to the doctor. We’ll get you D’d and C’d before you can say Dick
ation in relation to other healthy bodily practices, which socioculturally
with a Thing and a Tongue.’
posit a moral foil to it. The practice of self-harm is believed to put
‘What is deed and seed?’ constraints on the perpetrator’s corporeal mobility through spaces
which are comparatively more comfortably navigated by bodies which
‘Dilation and curettage. I don’t know what exactly it is but sounds
don’t commit self-harm (Heney, 2020, pp. 8–9). However, this myopic
like they open you up and put a young priest in there. Anyway, only
conceptualisation eludes the plurality embedded in the phenomenon.
doctors do it. So, when you’re knocked up, you’ll get a proper doctor
Gurung (2018) says self-harm is more “meaningful rather than patho­
to fiddle with your middle, you hear? No back-street abortions for
logical” (p. 42). Structures of power relations instigate bodies to navi­
you.’ (Pinto, 2013, p. 3–4)
gate spaces differently; while some are enabled to move unhindered,
Em’s desperate efforts to drain out the embryo articulate the trauma others are stuck at places. According to Flynn (2015), self-harm entails
of all those pregnant women who feel helpless and stuck due to lack of both harming and healing; they are not contradictory purposes as well as
reproductive choice. Petchesky (2021) defines choice as a segment of consequences; rather, both are co-dependent and co-existent. It may
corporeal autonomy which allows a woman to control and make de­ impact bodies, but it allows at least to continue moving against perilous
cisions about her own body (p. 7). In a misogynistic society, a woman’s situations. Chandler (2010) notes that instead of unilaterally under­
choice to terminate pregnancy is often condemned through a farcical standing self-harm as destructive and violent, it must be analysed
valorisation of the alibi of foetal rights (Smyth, 2002, p. 336). Firstly, phenomenologically as a survival strategy-a defence mechanism of a
hierarchical gender scripting bestows more power on men to draw the belaboured self to navigate through spaces despite challenging

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situations. Self-harm is engendered within interpersonal social contexts narrator was born, she used to hallucinate “someone turned on a tap. At
and affects the perpetrator’s body in a dialectical way; it is a response to first it was only a drip, a black drip … It’s like oil. Like molasses, slow at
complex circumstances that is “neither freely chosen nor entirely un­ first. Then one morning I woke up and it was flowing free and fast”
wanted” (Heney, 2020, p. 15). (Pinto, 2013, p. 12). Em’s corporeal choice of draining out the defile
blood was manifested in the metaphors of “oil” and “molasses” in the
7. Self-harm: resistance against gender scripting manifest content of her hallucination. Lakoff and Jhonson point out that
“metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in
Em’s experience of her body as an abject often manifested itself at the language but in thought and action” and “our ordinary conceptual sys­
corporeal level through the action of self-harm. While discussing body tem, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally meta­
politics, Bordo says that “the human body is itself a politically inscribed phorical in nature” (p. 3). For Em, with the onset of pregnancy, the
entity, its physiology and morphology shaped by histories and practices menstruation cycle stopped, and with it, the drainage of the excretory
of containment and control” (p. 21). Hierarchical gender scripting mucosal tissues from the inner lining of her uterus in the form of blood
underpinned by sexist reasoning frames female bodies as “victims of a stopped, which led her to conceive her corporeal impure. The metaphors
pathological physiology” (Balsamo 42) and, therefore, in need of per­ of draining out or releasing out in Em’s hallucination were a post-natal
petual containment and control through disciplinary techniques (King, manifestation of the latent corporeal desire of the pre-natal stage to spill
2004, p. 30). In opposition to such disciplinary techniques, women often out what was considered “unclean and improper” by her corporeal order
devise coping mechanisms that have the potential to translate a female and get rid of the liminal phase of identification with the foetus.
body from a site of exercise of power into a site of resistance. Em’s re­ Not only the “messy, bloody, fleshly” excreted, Chandler (2010)
petitive reliance on self-harm is no exception; it’s her assertion of notes that self-harm is embodied also through “visual, material, and felt
freedom from the shackles of containment and de-fetishization of nature of the wounds” (p. 244). Bodies are spectacles of performances,
control. and semiotics of performances are always in a webbed relation with the
The narrator says that Em often attempted to damage herself by structures of power, alienation and resistance. According to Kristeva
cutting her wrists- “Each time she had tried to kill herself she had opened (1982), “abject is a revolutionary force which constantly threatens the
her body and let her blood flow out” (Pinto, 2013, p. 13). He also superego and advocates a “purification” of the abject on the only fronts
recalled one specific incident when Em cut her wrist in the absence of where it can be recognized, the artistic and the semiotic” (Davis, 1995,
her family members and her caretaker- p. 6). The “single line” “dark red” cut on Em’s arm altered the semiotics
of her body and purified the abject. The visible opening of the cut was
When the show was over and we came home, the nurse was asleep.
the recognition of the “maternal” through usurping the superego’s he­
She had no idea where Em was—this, in a house with single
gemony. The breach on Em’s skin was the metaphorical collapse of the
bedroom, one living room, one small kitchen, two narrow corridors,
line of dissociation between Em’s selfhood-subject position and her
one four-by-two balcony. Susan knew. She headed straight for the
gender-scripted body-abject position; it accomplished a psychological
bathroom. There was no reply. She called, ‘Em, Em,’ panic streaking
soothing terminating the dysphoria— Em restored her ego. Akdogan
her voice. I knocked and called too. Finally, we heard something wet
notes that if discourses of surveillance and institutionalization nourish
and slithery inside, and the door opened.
normalcy, then the visual of the grotesque subverts the homogeneity to
‘I tried it again,’ Em said. She was drenched in blood. It was in her acknowledge the liminality of self and being and ambiguous modalities
hair. It was on her hands. It was dripping from her clothes. of expression (p. 432). The blood flowing within her corporeal territory
was defile, but when spilled out and it drenched her skin, the impure
[…]
blood turned itself into a purifying agent of the body-abject.
Her arms dangled between her knees. I picked up one of her arms and In “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance”, Judith Butler (2016)
turned it over to look. The cut was a single line, dark red. It said argues against the opinion that vulnerability and resistance are con­
nothing. (12–13) ceptual opposites. She affirms that “vulnerability, understood as a
deliberate exposure to power, is part of the very meaning of political
Em’s commitment to self-harm was the expression of “rational
resistance as an embodied enactment” (p. 12). Em’s body-corporeal
agency” (Pickard, 2015, p. 73) through the channelisation of suppressed
quintessentially exhibited the dualistic nature of performativity—
anger towards her corporeal entity, which opposed the actual subject­
while her corporeity was “invariably acted upon” by hierarchical gender
hood of her social being. The reiterative praxis of cartography on the
scripts, Em also acted as an autonomous agent exercising resistance
female body-corporeal within an androcentric culture had dissociated
through harming the corporeal. Self-harm never became a sign of
Em’ self-subject from her body-object (abject). Though Em is the
vulnerability, projecting Em as a weakling in need of empowerment;
body-bearer, her corporeity was scripted more by the beholder or the
instead, it showcased that where power is exercised is also the locus that
male-dominated society. As Kristeva says abject opposes “I” Em’s self­
engenders resistance. Em’s body being a spectacle of precarity also
hood confronted her body-corporeal (a site of power) as an oppositional
resisted the power structure within which it was emplaced— self-harm
force-encounter. When every time Em ‘opened her body’, it reflected her
enacts “a form of resistance that presupposes vulnerability” (Butler,
tireless efforts to eradicate the inscriptions imposed by gender scripting;
2016, p. 4) due to gender scripting and opposes precarity of female
she didn’t attempt to damage herself rather, she was cutting open and
bodies. Phrasing Kristeva, Em ‘expelled’ herself, ‘spitted’ herself out,
dissolving the “surface inscribed with culturally and historically specific
‘abjected’ herself “within the same motion through which” she ‘claimed
practices” (King, 2004, p. 30) of containment and control legitimized by
to establish’ herself.
gender scripting. Encroachment by the phallic (alien other) and the
emplacement of the foetus (another alien other) disregarded her
8. Conclusion
corporeal boundary and contaminated the blood that circulated
throughout her corporeal territory. To “let her blood flow out” was to
When the narrator was informed about Em’s death, it hardly both­
eliminate the defilement by spilling out the vile by rupturing the veil as
ered him. Rather, he was curious to know whether she died committing
if her skin or corporeal boundary was like a barrage or dam that needed
suicide or because of any natural causes. When he learned that she died
to break open and drain out the stored defile sewage to restore the
because of cardiac arrest, he felt relaxed because of saving the spectacle
equilibrium order.
of shame or embarrassment. Throughout the reminiscences, the narrator
Em’s dysphoria with her corporeity was also manifested in her hal­
wonders why his mother existed in the zone of consciousness that was
lucinations during her post-natal period. Em recalled that after the
distant from the other so-called normal women-

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S. Das et al. Social Sciences & Humanities Open 10 (2024) 100914

Imagine you are walking in a pleasant meadow with someone you CRediT authorship contribution statement
love, your mother. It’s warm, and there’s just enough of a breeze to
cool you. You can smell earth and cut grass, and something of an herb Sayan Das: Writing – original draft, Resources, Methodology,
garden. Lunch is a happy memory in your stomach and dinner awaits Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Md Moshabbir
you – a three-course meal you have devised – all your comfort foods. Alam: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Formal analysis.
The light is golden with a touch of blue, as if the sky were leaking. Sandip Sarkar: Writing – review & editing, Validation, Supervision.
Suddenly, your mother steps into a patch of quicksand. The world
continues to be idyllic and inviting for you but your mother is being
Declaration of competing interest
sucked into the centre of the earth (Pinto, 2013, p. 59).
Beauvoir claims that mythification of women is instrumental in No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
“persuading women of the naturalness of their fate” (in Plain and Sellers Both the authors of the paper confirm that the manuscript has not
10). Considering a woman’s consciousness as unfathomable consoli­ been previously published or is under consideration by any other jour­
dates men’s privileges to interpret, define and compartmentalize the nal. Also, both the authors do not have any conflict of interest.
female psyche through a phallocentric lens. Projecting the mother as
unknowable, disquieting and enigmatic also allows the narrator to pa­ References
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