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<p>This essay will illustrate Mari Ruti’s hypothesis regarding the relationship between subjective destitution and resistance, as outlined in her 2012 book, <i>The Singularity of Being</i>, through analyses of two literary texts from the postcolonial Global South: Sadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu short story, “Toba Tek Singh” (1955), and Dadolin Murak’s Tetun short story, “Voting with Betel Juice” (2017). These works highlight the traumatic experiences of dispossession suffered by two socially marginalized or subaltern characters and chronicle their distinct reactions to, or negotiations of, these particular histories of oppression and displacement. Building on Ruti’s claim that human “singularity … elude[s] both symbolic and imaginary closure,” thus causing a “breach in the horizon of cultural intelligibility,” I argue that the protagonists in Manto’s and Murak’s texts transform into impermeable singular selves when, knowingly or unknowingly, their “acts” resist the (quirky) laws of their social realities.</p>

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Acting weird, being unintelligible: subaltern resistance and creative living

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月30日

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  • Gautam Basu Thakur

摘要

This essay will illustrate Mari Ruti’s hypothesis regarding the relationship between subjective destitution and resistance, as outlined in her 2012 book, The Singularity of Being, through analyses of two literary texts from the postcolonial Global South: Sadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu short story, “Toba Tek Singh” (1955), and Dadolin Murak’s Tetun short story, “Voting with Betel Juice” (2017). These works highlight the traumatic experiences of dispossession suffered by two socially marginalized or subaltern characters and chronicle their distinct reactions to, or negotiations of, these particular histories of oppression and displacement. Building on Ruti’s claim that human “singularity … elude[s] both symbolic and imaginary closure,” thus causing a “breach in the horizon of cultural intelligibility,” I argue that the protagonists in Manto’s and Murak’s texts transform into impermeable singular selves when, knowingly or unknowingly, their “acts” resist the (quirky) laws of their social realities.