Rebels and Biopolitics: Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

Abstract

Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority—is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel Foucault’s work on the regulation of human beings through the production of power serves as an initial medium of investigation into biopolitics. Yet, Giorgio Agamben probes the covert and overt presence of biopolitical violence in society, particularly through his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The Indian playwright Mahasweta Devi’s Anglophone play-text Mother of 1084 (1973) enables scholars to participate in a critical forum on biopolitical praxis, because of its pervasive and explicit representation of state violence and rebels. Nonetheless, the play-text is often renowned for its reference to feminist ideology and mother-son relationship. Existing scholarship has overlooked the manifestation of torture and dead bodies on-stage represented in it. The play is also on the periphery of the mainstream literary criticism. By engaging with a textual portrayal of the play through Foucauldian and Agambenian critical lenses, this article interrogates the ways in which biopolitics coerces populations within the contemporary socio-political milieu. The analysis implies a potential to understand the biopolitical logic more meaningfully, and to be resistant to its stratagems of coercion. It adds to the existing body of literature on biopolitics by creating a specific account of life-politics as characterised in postcolonial theatre, provides a supplemental standpoint to debates on biopolitical subjugation and specifically contributes to current discussions of the play.