Author: Barun Das
DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.70798/PP/020300044
Abstract: This article examines Dalit feminism through the lens of cultural performance, focusing on how art, performance, and folklore function as critical sites for identity formation and representation in a globalized India. Situated within the broader context of caste-based marginalization and gendered exclusion, the study foregrounds the historical invisibility of Dalit women’s voices in mainstream cultural narratives. It argues that contemporary processes of globalization— through media circulation, digital platforms, and cultural commodification—have simultaneously opened new spaces for visibility while reproducing older hierarchies of representation. The central proposition is that Dalit women strategically mobilize folk traditions, performative practices, and artistic expressions to negotiate identity, assert agency, and challenge dominant cultural discourses. Methodologically, the article adopts an interdisciplinary qualitative approach, combining textual analysis of Dalit literary and visual productions, performance studies, and critical feminist and postcolonial frameworks. It engages with selected case studies from folk performance, digital media, and community-based cultural practices to trace how local expressions are reconfigured within global circuits. The analysis demonstrates that cultural performance operates as both a site of resistance and negotiation, where authenticity, visibility, and market forces intersect. The article concludes that Dalit feminism in a globalized context cannot be understood solely through frameworks of resistance or representation; rather, it must be theorized as a dynamic process of cultural negotiation, where identity is continuously reshaped across local and global terrains, producing new forms of feminist consciousness and political articulation.
Keywords: Dalit Feminism; Cultural Performance; Art and Folklore; Identity Formation; Representation; Globalization; Caste and Gender; Marginality; Cultural Politics; Intersectionality.
Page No: 342-350