Cartographies of Courage : Fictional Threads, Real Lives

The article explores the relations among space, caste and gender in Dalit massacres by locating the female survivors of the Kilvenmani massacre (1968) using feminist geocriticism and digital cartography. The introduction explores feminist scholarship in the field of GIS in order to situate the present study within the broader scholarship. This is followed by a section on the background and existing research on the Kilvenmani massacre. The next section summarizes the hybrid/mixed methodology which is a combination of feminist geocriticism (locating the female survivors in the place of violence) and digital cartography (physically locating the survivors in geographical maps and analyzing the relations). The section also details the materials that are considered in this article to identify the female survivors. The materials consist of both fictional (novels, films) and non-fictional (documentary, newspaper reports) texts that are closely read to understand the Dalit female experiences of the massacre. The next section gives the mapping of the female survivors using QGIS software along with the analysis of the data and the results to foreground the relation among caste, space, and gender in Dalit massacres. Both case studies, I (on the Marichjhapi massacre) and II (on the Kilvenmani massacre), are part of a larger study that aims to create a comprehensive spatial archive on the female survivors of selected Dalit massacres in independent India.