In the Bodies of Gods: Bharathanatyam Diaspora Organizing and the Production and Dismantling of Colonial Logics

Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication

Major Professor

Mahuya Pal, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Patrice M. Buzanell, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sonia Ivancic, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Nancy Romero-Daza, Ph.D.

Keywords

Anti-colonial, Bharathanatyam, Anti-colonial, Organizational Communication, New materialism

Abstract

Bharathanatyam is a dance form dating back to 300 BCE of what is now Tamil Nadu, South India. Bharathanatyam uses hand gestures, facial expressions, and footwork to narrate stories and demonstrate rhythm. This dissertation explores how the global diaspora of bharathanatyam practitioners organize around bharathanatyam informed by colonial logics. In this dissertation I aim to a) define “diaspora organizing” beyond nation-state identity b) apply this definition of diaspora to the global practice of bharathanatyam, and c) explore practitioners sensemaking of their experiences with bharathanatyam. I approach the first goal by defining diaspora in terms of anti-colonial theorizing and describing its possibilities for organizational communication theorizing. I approach the second goal by considering how art can be a form of anti-colonial diaspora organizing and apply this perspective to bharathanatyam. I approach the third goal by conducting a qualitative study in which I interview participants across the bharathanatyam diaspora. I then analyze these conversations to learn how these participants make sense of bharathanatyam from their different discursive-material realities. This third goal is informed by my specific research question: How do practitioners from different hybridintersectional identities make sense of bharathanatyam? To address this research question, I conducted 22 semi-structured interviews virtually with bharathanatyam practitioners. I analyzed the data from these interviews guided by Iterative Thematic Analysis, Critical Narrative Analysis, New Materialism and Indigenous Materialisms. I found that practitioners make sense of their experiences with bharathanatyam as a) pursuing belonging and b) experiencing struggle. Participants describe pursuing belonging through avenues of culture, classical tradition, and religion. Participants describe experiencing struggle through avenues of cultural and religious organizing, control of emotional and bodily expression, and control of sexualities. I tie each of these sensemakings back to logics established during the British and Portugal colonization of India and the subsequent Indian Independence Movement. I argue that the creation of the Indian national identity as a singular experience, and the appropriation of bharathanatyam from hereditary dancing communities to demonstrate membership into an Indian national identity, were acts of colonial violence which reverberates painfully today across the bharathanatyam diaspora today. I offer a possible path towards healing with the concept of “agential wounds” which combines Indigenous materialism, new materialism, and anti-colonial theory. I argue that healing agential wounds means returning to relationships with all agential beings, human and non-human alike, that make up practitioners real daily lives. This contrasts with the pursuit of relationships to discourses and materials that are removed from our lives yet are still imposed upon them, such as the pursuit of belonging to a constructed Indian national identity which does not truly exist. I argue that central to healing is solidarity across the bharathanatyam diaspora to one another and in particular solidarity to hereditary dancing communities. Solidarity across the diaspora means divesting from dominant bharathanatyam spaces which continue to produce realities of violence and investing in practices that create realities of communion and healing.

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