Caste and Silence: The Psychic Transmission of Trauma in Dalit Women

Abstract

For decades, Dalit narratives have been primarily examined through sociological and historical lenses, often neglecting the psychic dimension of caste exclusion and its transgenerational effects. This article proposes a critical listening to this dimension by investigating how the trauma of untouchability is psychically inscribed and transmitted among Dalit women, based on the autobiography The Weave of My Life (2022), by Urmila Pawar. Drawing on critical psychoanalysis, French Discourse Analysis, and subaltern studies, the analysis explores how trauma operates as an affective and historical grammar. Scenes involving shame, silence, bodily violence, sexual harassment, and symbolic dispossession are examined. The findings suggest that caste suffering is transmitted through sensitive, non-discursive inscriptions such as the body, affect, and gesture, constituting a legacy that speaks through silence. The autobiography thus becomes a space for reinscribing trauma and collectively elaborating memory. As a key contribution, the study proposes a decentred clinic that affirms the epistemic legitimacy of Dalit testimony and challenges universalist paradigms in psychoanalytic theory to enable a situated listening of historical suffering.