Cartographies of Courage : Fictional Threads, Real Lives

What is Cartographies of Courage: Fictional Threads, Real Lives?

Cartographies of Courage: Fictional Threads, Real Lives is a project developed as part of the doctoral thesis of Ms. Jyothi Justin with the supervision of Prof. Nirmala Menon at the Digital Humanities and Publishing Studies Research Group (IIT Indore). It is the first project in India to offer theoretical, methodological, legal and pedagogical frameworks for understanding Dalit massacres. The aim of the project is to foreground the female narratives of selected Dalit massacres of independent India. At present the focus is on understanding the relations among space, caste and gender in Dalit massacres using feminist geocriticism and digital cartography. As a starting point, two massacres, 1. Kilvenmani Massacre, Tamil Nadu (1968) and 2. Marichjhapi Massacre, West Bengal (1979) are mapped in detail though we plan to expand to other massacres in future. The focus of the project is on the Dalit female survivors – both historical and fictional representation of the survivors. The project makes use of non-fictional texts, newspapers, letters, brochures and documentaries to identify the historical representations. Fictional texts and films are consulted to understand the fictional representations. This process further led to the creation of a spatial database of the survivors that facilitated their mapping using QGIS software. The archive is created using ArcGIS Online whereas the analysis is mostly done using ArcGIS Pro.

Methodology – Texts, Tools and Theory

This study aims to foreground the female survivors of the selected Dalit massacres, by examining the relation between space, caste, and gender in massacres through the analysis of both the literary and non-literary narratives on the massacres.

The first part of the project consisted of selecting a massacre and collecting materials and the nature of the materials assembled lead to the second part i.e., the methodology. The materials gathered as part of this study include, data compiled (manually scraped) from available online newspaper reports (the list in annexure 2), English literary texts (both fictional and non-fictional) and research articles resulting in the creation of a database of the survivors. Both textual and visual narratives along with the real survivor locations (and their narratives for the extended study) are considered for this study as ‘individual memory needs to be complemented by literature and film as an archive of memory in the public sphere – a public, collective, and non-statist memory’. Besides the database on the survivor, the location of the prominent writers on the massacre were also assembled, together with the analysis of the court orders, letters, petitions, etc., on the massacre. The diverse nature of the materials compiled as part of the project led to adoption of a methodology that is a combination of feminist geocriticism (theoretical analysis; qualitative) and digital cartography (practical and visual analysis; quantitative). This methodology was adopted to efficiently accommodate the materials collected and to utilize it to recognize the marginalized, invisible Dalit women of massacres.

Theoretical Framework: Geocriticism, Feminist Geocriticism and Digital Cartography – A Short Introduction

Geocritical approaches put forth by Bertrand Westphal (2007) and Robert Tally (2011) stresses the importance of space in literary research. Tally’s concept of geocriticism which is applied in this study, focuses on literary geography and the relation between the real and literary or imaginary spaces. It focuses on how the spatial critical theory which he termed “cartographics” (here digital cartography), could be used for the analytical criticism of literature i.e., geocriticism. Westphal’s (2007) geocriticism, on the other hand is, “a ‘geocentered’ approach to literature and cultural studies, which would allow a particular place to serve as the focal point for a variety of critical practices”. Westphal maintained that geocritics would begin by locating the place (geocentric) in an attempt to form an archive or corpus of literary and cultural representations of the place (Westphal, 2007), which is followed in this study as well. For Westphal (2007) geocriticism is a geo-centered rather than an ego-centered approach that is multifocal (focuses on different narratives) and polysensorial (includes sound, smell, taste and textures of a place) following a spatiotemporal scheme. However, both Westphal and Tally reiterates the idea that geocriticism is a developing theory that needs further exploration, examination, and expansion by researchers of spatial humanities. In short geocriticism “may be used to ask new questions, to read differently, to engage with other disciplinary methods, and to interpret the ways that we make sense of our own spaces, of our own mappings”.

Digital Cartography refers to the process of creating critical/analytical maps using digital technology and ranges from simple google maps to complicated mapping software such as GIS (QGIS/ArcGIS) etc. It helps to apply and visualise the geocritical approach. Digital maps created using GIS have the potential to fully utilise the multifocality and polysensorial techniques of geocriticism by combining the spatial data from different medium – literary texts, images, sounds, films, media reports etc., thereby suggesting new ways in reading and analysing space and place. It also becomes possible to identify gaps in spatial representations (for instance from a feminist perspective) and to compare and contrast the patterns of representation of the same space across different media and different time that may not be revealed using traditional Humanities research methods. Despite acting as visualisation tools, the digital maps themselves become a metadata upon which further spatio-temporal research becomes possible resulting in the expansion of the existing theories in Humanities or even in the creation of new theories. Digital cartography thereby fit into the conditions and characteristics of the Geocritical theoretical and methodological framework facilitating a multimodal and interdisciplinary spatial research.

The use of digital maps together with feminist geocriticism enables researchers to visualise the patterns of locations and movements of Dalit women of the selected massacres on a single map (or space) and to analyse and theorise on the same. Geocriticism is therefore comparable to the ethnographic research method of ‘triangulation’ in which multiple data from various sources including “narrative and oral history as well as life experiences of sufferers have been used as a tool of research” and here the place serves as the central platform where the diverse data converge. Feminist Geocriticism and digital cartography intersect in several ways that facilitate a new methodology of using digital cartography in feminist geocriticism. For instance, both geocriticism and feminism are constantly emerging and expanding. Amy D. Wells (2014) draws the parallels between Geocriticism and Gender (feminist) studies based on their pluralistic character i.e., both geocriticism and feminist theories embrace multiplicity. Applying geocriticism to feminism and gender research unravels the importance of space in the reproduction and propagation of socio-cultural identity. Feminist theory is constantly expanding to include the intersectional experiences of women (identarian) and geocriticism is a multimodal and polysensorial spatial analytical method that can propose space as an intersectional category in addition to others like race, class, caste and gender. Therefore, combining both the theories result in a new method that sheds light on the interconnections between identity and space by analysing its representation in different medium.

Interested in knowing more about how feminist geocriticism and digital cartography intersects? – Read here!

Steps in Methodology

Research Outcomes From the Project

In Media

Design Choices, Tools, Plugins. . .