Rides of Insight

This paper analyzes the act of ‘thalaikoothal,’ performed on ill and infirm older people in the southern part of the state of Tamil Nadu, India, with reference to two Tamil films, K.D. (2019) and Thalaikoothal (2023), which portray the horrors of the practice. A kind of involuntary euthanasia, the ritual continues to have covert social acceptance as exemplified in the films, favoring the common stereotype that marks aging bodies as unproductive and unworthy of living. Therefore, this article explores the aging bodies in the films as sites of power, controlled by death enforced through Thalaikoothal, employing Mbembe’s concept of ‘necropower.’ It also examines the effects of the practice on the elderly, who are compelled to prepare themselves for a forced death. The study further identifies the underlying factors contributing to the prolonged existence of Thalaikoothal even in the present times.Keywords: Thalaikoothal, aging bodies, senicide, necropower, Tamil films, Achille Mbembe

The room was pitch-dark, seemingly nonexistent, as he opened his eyes. Not even a trace of the dawn had yet made its way through the louvres. ‘That’s weird, for I got up so early,’ he thought. The entire right side of his body had gone numb, especially his arm, which appeared paralysed. ‘See, that’s what I get when I lie on my right side.’ He was always afraid of sleeping on the side of his heart, in case something happened and he never woke up again. And he liked thinking, in a somewhat smug way it must be said, about his desire to experience his own death. ‘There’s nothing more humiliating than to die while asleep,’ he had once written in a diary that he kept. ‘Kept’, in a manner of speaking, for the diary was a battered, 100-page exercise book which he remembered three or four times a year, and then he’d take the opportunity to put down on paper some of the thoughts that occasionally crossed his mind.The numbness had in some measure diminished. But what really sickened him lay in hi...

Samuel Beckett bilingvalni je autor. Većinu je svojih književnih tekstova napisao na dva jezika, engleskom i francuskom. Nakon književnih početaka na materinjem engleskom jeziku, nakon Drugoga svjetskog rata, tijekom nekoliko idućih godina, Beckett piše isključivo na francuskom jeziku, potaknut razlozima estetske naravi. Od 1956. godine pa sve do smrti istovremeno piše na oba jezika. Vlastite tekstove, napisane na počecima književne karijere, sâm ili u suradnji nakon sredine pedesetih godina prevodi na drugi jezik.Beckett je vlastite tekstove tijekom prevođenja revidirao, mijenjao izraze i kulturne referencije, pa je stoga svaki prijevod ujedno revizija i transformacija prethodno napisane verzije. Tekstovi koji su prevedeni nedugo nakon dovršetka izvornika u nešto se manjoj mjeri razlikuju od samoprijevoda koji su nastali godinama ili čak desetljećima nakon dovršetka izvorne verzije teksta, poput primjerice engleske i francuske verzije Murphy, Watt ili Mercier i Camier. Također, Becket...

In the novels published in the course of the nineties, Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994), Never Far from Nowhere (1996), and Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Andrea Levy (1956–2019), a British writer of Jamaican origin, focuses on the experiences of British-born daughters of first-generation Caribbean immigrants in Britain. This paper will examine how Levy’s young protagonists struggle to come to terms with their highly hybridized identities, which resist reductive racial categories of ‘white’ and ‘black.’ Experiencing racial bias on the one hand and confronting silences about their Jamaican heritage on the other, Levy’s protagonists often find themselves in liminal spaces and are constantly compelled to negotiate private (Jamaican) and more public (British) spheres of existence.Keywords: Andrea Levy, Stuart Hall, womanhood, British, hybridity, identityIn Jackie Kay’s 1984 poem “So You Think I Am a Mule,” the lyric speaker is an unapologetic mixed-race woman. She responds very assertiv...

the family hair
spills over lunch
after we’ve become
weak and thin

my hair ends up in the plate
and pretends to be drowning
I silence it
with shyness behind my ear

the teeth are the answer
to the childish carelessness
when I splash water on the hair
bound around my waist
barely pulling out my hands
I offer them the remaining drops

Bašić called him early that morning, just after seven.It was an autumn Saturday, lead-grey light seeped in through the shutters, and Niko was idling in bed, troubled by sleeplessness, observing Maja’s body move in tune with her breathing under the duvet. He was watching the light conquer the corners of the room when the ringing of the telephone broke the silence. He dragged himself over to the device and heard a raspy, elderly baritone from the other side. “Bašić speaking.”He didn’t immediately work out who he was talking to. He stood in the hallway, barefoot, telephone in hand, sifting through his memory, hoping to connect the name he’d just heard to a voice and a face. “Bašić, your former neighbour,” the man on the other side added, as if he’d realized what was going on. “Apologies for calling so early, but I think you should come over to Sts. Cyril and Methodius Street.” In that moment, Niko connected the voice coming from the receiver with a face which surfaced from the past. He kn...