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The Other Dimensions Of Dalit Oppression: Tracing Intersectionality Through Ants Among Elephants, Arundhati Sen

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper demonstrates how gender abuse is not merely restricted to hierarchical gender oppression but also operates within an intersectional framework where gender is intertwined with hierarchical caste exploitation. While revisiting White bourgeois feminism, bell hooks emphasizes the incorporation of different marginal perspectives to make feminism an all-encompassing radical movement, accessible to everyone. Inspired by the lens that hooks uses to interpret Black feminism and the Indian scholars who approach Dalit feminism from an intersectional standpoint, I analyze Sujatha Gidla’s autobiography Ants among Elephants (2017), a family story of a lower-middle-class rural South Indian Dalit woman. I argue for the …