Mahasweta Devi's "Behind the Bodice": An Intersectional Approach to Understanding the Fetishized Female Body as a Site of Oppression and Traumatic Memory

Abstract In the context of highly dynamic and nuanced power relations, it is to be analyzed how the “female body” is shaped by the social and political practices of containment and control. Being subjugated and reduced into mere objects of desire and patriarchal whims, women have been the worst victims of an anarchical society. Tortured and mutilated, the female body becomes a site of eroticism prone to phallocentric oppression. Mahasweta Devi’s notable collection of Breast Stories, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak remains a testimony to how the female ‘breast’ turns out to be a serious metaphor for the repressive state system. This study seeks to explicate one of Devi’s powerful narratives, “Behind the Bodice” (“Choli ke Piche”), from the significant theoretical perspectives of ‘Intersectionality’ and ‘Trauma’. Situating the story within the broader analytical framework of Gender Studies, ‘Intersectionality’ is an attempt to identify the different aspects of gender, identity, caste, and class that determine the predicament of Gangor, a marginalized tribal woman who finds herself imprisoned in the cobweb of the suffocating and structural oppression of the male gaze. Furthermore, the paper delves deeper to explore how “Behind the Bodice” could be read as a trauma narrative wherein the ferocious nature of sexual exploitation marks the female body as a site of traumatic memory as well, to which the central protagonist responds by turning her trauma into an indomitable voice of resilience and protest. Keywords: Intersectionality, Marginalization, Male gaze, Oppression, Trauma, Resilience