Slum Population in Haryana : Some Reflections

10.56815/IJAHSS.V1.N1.34-3

Authors

  • Supriya Dhull Research Scholar, Department of Geography, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
  • Ravinder Kaur Professor, Department of Geography, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

Keywords:

Slum, Infrastructure, Population, Haryana, Development

Abstract

John Maxwell Coetzee, the most celebrated contemporary authordeals with a vast thematic range in his fictional works such as political,socio-cultural, mythic, psychological, philosophical, economic, historical, and sexual. Motifssuch as existential angst, love, violence, humiliation, colonial oppression, empathy, concern,compassion, etc. find concentrated and intricate expression in his fiction. This present paper is an attempt to experience empathy with the victims of sexual violence in his novel, ‘Disgrace’, which explicitly deals with sexual violence thereby depicting its political, psychological, socio-cultural as well as historical implications. Coetzee delineates the sexual dimension of violence via textually demonstrating how sexual violence is employed as a narrative strategy with its empathetic culmination vis-a-vis the characters who are victims of it. Since the treatment of violence in his fictionculminates in the readers experiencing empathy with the oppressed/ victimized/ exploited, theconcept of "narrative empathy" as enunciated by Suzanne Keen in her phenomenal book on ‘Empathy and the Novel’ (2010) shall be evoked and employed to deepen the analysis of this paper critically.Coetzee deals with complex aspects of sexual violence in ‘Disgrace’. At one level, readers come across the perpetrator in the guise of the protagonist, David Lurie holding a powerful position of a university professor and being ‘servant of Eros’using it to establish forced sexual liaison with his student; at another level, readers have Petrus’s ‘people’ who rape Lucy to assert that it is them who are in a position of control and authority. It is noticed that it is not the depiction of violence that the authoris concerned with; it is rather empathy, concern, and compassion that accumulate in the mind ofthe readers as they pursue.

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Published

2022-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles