Dear Nationalists: Writing Poetry in (Anti) Social Media

Abstract

Drawing from my experience of being gender trolled for my poem, titled “Dear Nationalists”, shared on Facebook and subsequently published in a webzine, I explore the relationship between Northeast Indian Anglophone writings and the role played by language in its reception and the affect elucidated by it. Toward this end, I explore the relationship of English to other local languages/mother tongue to understand its emotive appeal. NIAL are already read as a mark of disloyalty to the mother tongue or at least invites an opinion of lacking rootedness to one’s native milieu. In this paper I explore whether the adverse reactions to my poem, however disproportionate, can be understood by exploring the reception of a poem, and the role played by gender and cultural identity in the very act of reading.

Keywords:

• Northeast India
• Anglophone literature
• poetry
• gender
• trolling

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to the editors Amit R. Baishya and Rakhee Kalita Moral for the incisive comments, suggestions that helped me rethink the arguments and articulation of my ideas. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their suggestions. Papori Bora had organized a presentation of a previous version of this paper at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The discussions helped me clarify some of my preliminary propositions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As the trolling culminated into a rape threat I filed an F.I.R. on the 26 July 2017, I used pseudonyms in my paper as the matter is subjudice.

2 The set of five poems can be read here: https://www.raiot.in/dear-nationalist-5-poems/The same webzine later carried the statement “Misogynist Diktats and Nationalist Hubris” https://raiot.in/misogynist-diktats-and-nationalist-hubris/ against the cyber bullying and gender harassment.

3 Loosely translated as outsider or Indian, the term is sometimes used in a pejorative sense.

4 In one sense this name calling that I was subjected to via claims of being injured by my poem brings to mind Judith Butler's query—“When we claim to be injured by language, what kind of claim do we make?” (1997, 1). The affects and effects of injurious speech resonate beyond its immediate contexts. The reaction by the police to my F.I.R. also seemed to suggest that I too make a claim of being injured by the language of the trolls which had not yet manifested itself as a physical injury to my person. Butler refers to Richard Delgado and Mari Matsuda to suggest metaphorically “that linguistic injury acts like physical injury”. If one looks at threats to the body it is not only the violence of language at work but language filled with the potential of bodily harm. In any case “threat is a speech act that is at once a bodily act, it is already, in part, out of its own control” (ibid, 12).

5 I am thankful to Navaneetha Mokkil for this point in a draft presentation of this paper on 8th October 2021, Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

6 Navaneetha Mokkil’s comments at a presentation of an earlier version of this paper on 8th October 2021, Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Soibam Haripriya

Soibam Haripriya is Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow at the South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin. Her (edited) book Homeward (2022) is published by Zubaan, New Delhi. Her key areas of interest are Gender, Violence, Northeast India and Poetry and/in Ethnography.