https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.051
Between Care and Control: Biopolitical Practice in Sunitha Krishnan’s I Am What I Am
KAVYA T
Research Scholar
Department of English
Govt. Victoria College, Palakkad
Affiliated to the University of Calicut
Abstract: This paper maps and analyses Sunitha Krishnan’s memoir I Am What I Am as a vantage point to critique the nexus of care and control as a biopolitical practice. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of biopower and governmentality as biopolitical practices, NGO-centred anti-trafficking activism operates within, rather than outside, broader regimes of biopolitical governance. A close textual analysis reveals the paradoxical role of activist interventions, simultaneously critiquing state neglect and extending forms of ethical, institutional, and regulatory control over vulnerable populations.
NGO activism extolled in the memoir participates in governing vulnerable lives through identifying, managing and regulating marginalised bodies because the system works in subtle ways to regulate every disruption to its sustenance. These are techniques of governance that reorganise power rather than redistributing it. Care and control are entangled in an endless process of rescue, legal intervention, rehabilitation, discipline, surveillance and correction. The paper argues that NGO-led structural change is limited, albeit there are moments of disruption.
Keywords: Sunitha Krishnan, I Am What I Am, biopolitics, NGO activism, care and control, governmentality.
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