Intersectional Re-Framing: A Tool for Portraying Phoenix Like Characters in Meena Kandasamy’s Poems

Abstract

The present research paper, Intersectional Re-framing: A Tool for Portraying Phoenix Like Characters in Meena Kandasamy’s Poems, is a critical assessment and attempt to establish Meena Kandasamy’s adventurous journey of becoming an interventionist to the mainstream literature through her scathing expressions, gory description of atrocities, discussing the facade of subjugation, registering her resistance through creativity, and demythifying the established tradition and religious hegemony of Brahmanic cultures. The backdrop of oppression, jeopardising females at gender, race, caste and class levels, transcends their level of tolerance and endurance. The functioning of intersectionality as a critical framework to define multiple and interconnected power factors such as racism, casteism, sexism, class exploitation, etc. becomes indispensable for the modern-era creative writer. By acknowledging burning issues, the writer is incited to resist, reframe, and recreate through deconstruction and dissent, demystifying the traditional standards that jeopardise females, announcing a "New Feminism" at various levels, and rejecting the entire concept of western feminism as inapplicable to all contexts, including India. She blatantly subverts the established hegemony of the patriarchal and androcentric setup with a “New Literature" for the subaltern, down-trodden, underprivileged, Dalit, and oppressed females. She successfully creates a niche of resistance literature demanding liberation in a modern, liberal, and pragmatic way. Meena Kandasamy’s oeuvre exposes exploitation, from transgression to transformation, by resolving the problems through resilience and developing focused strategy through intellectualism and practical wisdom. The poetess asserts in her Introduction to the anthology, Ms Militancy, “I strive to be a sphinx: part woman, part lioness, armed with dissent and lethal with riddles.” (Kandasamy 9). The paper covers the journey of Meena Kandasamy’s creating the gyno-space in “New Indian Feminist Literature” through autobiographical and confessional notes, seeking liberation for her characters through the literature of resistance by selecting the path of resilient intellect and level-headed action, the resurrection of universal characters as the Indian phoenix, and self-annihilation for the sake of social justice.