Reading the Perplexing Figure of the "Bandit Queen": Interpellation, Resistance and Opacity

Abstract

Through an examination of some of the "stories" that textually produced and constructed Phoolan Devi as the iconic figure of the "Bandit Queen," I argue that a range of representations including the biopic, Bandit Queen, functioned to impose a form of transparency on the marginalized. Such texts aim to tell the "truth" and to transparently reveal the subaltern woman "specifically Phoolan Devi" and the savagery that surrounded her. I will argue that this imposition of transparency is achieved through interpellation "hailing Phoolan Devi as the "Bandit Queen" or as the Kali figure" an unsophisticated woman who was brutalized and sought revenge. This process of interpellation reveals neoliberal ideologyââ¬â¢s attempt to manage the burgeoning political power of lower caste and dalit groups through the body of the gendered subaltern in postcolonial India. I will also argue that despite these attempts to reveal the "truth" about Phoolan Devi, ambivalences remain. I will show that such ambivalences can be productive mainly because they resist the imposition of transparency on the subaltern. More specifically, I will argue that one must read and represent the subject through the contradictions and the paradoxes that she appears to embody and that the autobiographical text "I, Phoolan Devi" in particular offers us this opportunity.