Pārppu: Embracing the Fugitive Wisdom (Dalitity, Fugitivity & Agential Realism)

 

           

                                               

 

( image courtesy alamy.com)

Above all, do not forget.

Commit everything - each blade of grass,

teary-eyed child, and unmarked grave  to memory.

Then, tell your story. Tell it on your bruised knees.

 

                                                                  - Andrew Lam, Perfume Dreams

 

 

The memory of my maternal grandma, now fading like the gentle twilight, resurfaces with the brilliance of her distinctive words. Amidst the contours of our family vacations, my siblings and I found ourselves immersed in the enchanting days spent at her side, traversing the captivating pilgrimage to her abode. The journey, adorned with the richness of fresh red soil, enveloped by the comforting presence of coconut trees, punctuated by quaint crossroads, and graced by the iconic hanging wooden bridge over the river, unfurled a vivid canvas of communion with nature. Each step etched a sacred ritual, and the nights spent on a humble mat beneath the vast night sky carved a redemptive sanctuary within my soul – a solace during moments of loneliness.

 

Amid the kaleidoscope of Malayalam colloquial expressions generously shared by my grandmother, one term stood out with unparalleled significance – "Pārppu." Inflected with colloquial intonations and subaltern nuances, its importance transcended the confines of mere language. As a Dalit Christian woman navigating the intricate tapestry of Christian spirituality in early 20th-century Malabar, North Kerala, my grandma embodied an uncommon fusion of Eastern Christian Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and the radical wisdom of subaltern Christian becoming.

 

                                             

 

Delving into the essence of "Pārppu" in my grandmother's distinctive vernacular, I discern a profound connection to Dalitity – a term encapsulating the marginalized existence and resistance of Dalit communities. She used to insist us to stay (Pārppu) with her one more day, and one more day ( many more) and she used this particular word Pārppu to refer that experience of with-nessing together. I assume, the term, pulsates with a call for "staying" in authenticity, urging a radical dwelling unbound by fixity. It invites us to trust in the agential capacity of intra-actions between humans and more-than-human beings, instilling a complete faith in the agential realism that encapsulates the fugitivity of a subaltern woman – a transformative force that is both therapeutic and revolutionary.

 

Embedded within the framework of new materialist theory, particularly articulated by Karen Barad, "Pārppu" seamlessly aligns itself with the concept of agential realism. Barad's insistence on distributive agency, necessitating grappling with the intricacies of existence without seeking simplistic resolutions, finds resonance in the very essence of "Pārppu." It calls us to confront the uncertainties of life with resilience and fortitude. Donna Haraway's concept of staying with the trouble further illuminates the profound significance of "Pārppu" in our contemporary context, demanding a steadfast commitment to addressing the challenges of our times without succumbing to despondency or indifference.

 

In the current ecological tipping point, the imperative of staying with the trouble, avoiding fixed categorizations, becomes paramount, echoing Barad's perspective. This harmoniously aligns with the tenets of "Pārppu," a kind of tentacular thinking, encouraging us to embrace the complexities and uncertainties of existence with an open heart and an engaged mind. In this sense, Pārppu, is an invitation to navigate the intricacies of life without succumbing to the allure of simplistic resolutions.

 

                                   

                                           (Movie Harriet cover image)

 

"Pārppu" emerges not only as a call for staying with the trouble but as a manifesto for embodied resistance – a bold invitation to authentically inhabit the flux of existence, placing trust in the agential capacities of more than human entities. It encapsulates the fugitive wisdom of Dalit spirituality, serving as itinerant hope and resilience in a world marked by war and violence. The cinematic portrayal of Harriet Tubman in the movie "Harriet" vividly captures her unique contemplative practice of "Pārppu," a radical act of communion with the more -than-human ecosystem for an itinerant/subversive discernment, showcasing its cross-cultural resonance as a subaltern ecological wisdom. This attests that another world is not merely on its way; it already exists among the people at the fringes, weaving its threads through diverse cultures and practices, beckoning us to embrace its transformative potential.

Theopoetic Christ: Ornitheological Entanglements

 

 

Crushed in your memories,

bruised in your agonies,

I wonder how you transcend

melancholy into melodies!

In the eerie nights of solitude,

dazed in the fury wind,

drenched in the misty rain,

you might have dreamt of a winged life!

One day, you will trust your wings,

stand on your ground,

and burst out in your spirit,

to reach the limits of the sky,

and to chat with the stars.

Thank you for being with,

and teaching us;

We journey each other home,

as we are the intertwined interbeings!

Yes, for sure,

the woodpecker is a bio-mystical relationship

between the wood and its wounds! [1]

-Wood-Pecker

 

To start in the middle means to be entangled in dialogue with pluriform hermeneutic possibilities, destabilizing any forms of totalitarian interpretations. Perhaps it is a spiritual/ethical practice of “always beginning in the middle,”[2] as Deleuze puts it. This new categorical imperative of eco-ethics is letting our loves be like the wasp and orchid, without beginning and end, as continually in the middle, between things, interbeing, and intermezzo! Roland Faber explicates what it means to begin in the middle.

 

To begin in the middle always means to follow multiplicities in their deconstructive complexity within and without, to unsettle the boundaries and clear borders of forced identities, which are always imposed measures of the One with its power-installed abstractions of unification and division. To begin in the middle is an ethical category that activates us from the middle of the happening of multiplicities and asks us to always submerge into their middle and many folds of connectivity within and beyond, which always form under the skin of powers of unification and division and only come to life within, across and beyond the boundaries of power.[3]

 

To embody the liminal, we must transcend the elevated realms of unity and actively engage with the intricate dynamics within and between various elements. We must acknowledge the moments of connection between different entities and the artificial barriers that isolate them. Embracing the concept of being "in-between" requires us to adopt an intermezzo mindset, contrasting the rigid abstractions that perpetuate a sense of dominance over nature, culture, and ourselves. This mindset encourages us to embrace a more humble and nuanced perspective. To embody the liminal is to challenge the notion of fixed identity and instead embrace a multidimensional existence akin to a river's flowing nature or the rhizome's interconnectedness.

 

Nesting Theopoetic Imagination

This  note begins with theopoetic attention to a recently composed poem displayed at the outset of this article. The poem, penned two years ago, recounts the poignant tale of two "wood-pecker" birds who tragically lost their nest during a tumultuous night of merciless storms and relentless rain. My loving wife, children, and I endeavored to offer solace and sustenance to these vulnerable young woodpecker fledglings, only to witness their untimely demise a few days later. This heartrending event served as a profound catalyst, igniting a theological contemplation on the fleeting existence of woodpeckers, symbolic of Christ's ultimate sacrifice on the cross, unifying the concepts of wounds and wood. The haunting verses of the poem compelled me to reevaluate the woodpecker as a hermeneutical key enabling a deeper exploration of the divine "wood-pecker" existence embodied in Jesus Christ, who hung on a tree (Acts 5:20), suspended between the realms of heaven and earth. Thus, it unveils the divine intercarnational relationship with the entirety of the world (John 3:16). It is worth noting that the historical fact of Jesus, as a skilled carpenter working with wood, further inspired me to establish this extraordinary connection between Jesus and the woodpecker, unveiling a profound and intricate bond.

A genuine neighborliness with the more-than-human materiality will ignite in us the realization that we are inter beings, not independent beings.[4] This leads us back to nature itself. We need to find ourselves in a continuum with nature. Anyway, that sad little incident of the death of two woodpecker nestlings and the agony that brought us made me to realize that there are deep ontological roots of sharing in our very existence, which we deliberately forget in the fake hustle and bustle of life's struggle. I tried to trace an ornitheological connection between the wood, wood-pecker, wound, Christ, marginality, and liminality in the light of this event. 

 

Wood-pecker & Subalternity 

The woodpecker's existence between heaven and earth exemplifies the "liminal" life. When we translate the symbol of the "wood-pecker" as an embodiment of liminal life and interpretive device,  it is better to use the hyphen in between "wood-pecker." The hyphen in the middle is a careful record of the life of critical liminality. The experiences of in-between / betwixt problematize simultaneously the social condition of being inside and outside. Such stumbling experiences mark the lives of the marginalized. The subaltern lived experiences of  Dalit people in India punctuate a unique liminal location of “victim-insider (Dasyus ) and untouchable-outsider(Asprsyas )” and “visibility (prathyaksha ) and invisibility( aprathyaksha ). This existential dilemma of the “inbetweenness” of the subaltern, which I name as the “critical liminalities” referring to both avowal and disavowal of Dalit body in a caste stigmatized sociality. Along with the Critical liminalities, there is an array of under-explored and unattended Dalit subjective experiences like body-bereft ( body as debt, not as credit experience, a kind of epidermalization linguistic debt ( d[y]s-ability to engage effectively in the political negotiations), and other contextual ambiguities arising out of local social contracts. The experience of subaltern critical liminality conjures up a new mode of knowing, being, and acting in the world. This new approach is essential for addressing subaltern histories marked by disruption, displacement, and irrecoverable loss.

 

Ornitheological Entanglements

An  ornitheological quest[5] for connecting  Jesus Christ and the woodpecker inspired me to consider the ecotheopoetic method as a suitable assemblage paradigm, which combines eco-consciousness, poetics, and theology, traversing the disciplinary borders intentionally.This assemblage thinking that interconnects the metaphors woodpecker, Christ, wood, and wounds, inspired by ornitheology, helps us to re-theorize the state of exception of the people at the margin. Therefore, theopoetic Christ is reimagined here as an active interlocutor between the subalternity, and ecosensibility of the people at  the fringes. In this radical imagination, critical liminality is construed as the new centrality, which calls us for a new planetary ethics. It is a subversively paradoxical planetary wisdom, marked by its rhizomatic nature, already practiced by many indigenous communities. 

( An ungroomed excerpt from my recent article for the upcoming Earth Volume)

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[1]  Baiju Markose, The Cross and The Peacock, (Delhi: ISPCK, 2021), 20.

[2] Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. (London: Bloomsbury Revelations, 2013),17.

[3] Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal, Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness ( New York: Fordham University Press, 2013),232.

[4] Thich Nath Hanh, Call Me by My True Names ( Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1999)154.

[5] Ornitheology is a term coined by the great theologian and birder John Stott in his book The Birds, Our Teachers. Ornitheological field of research centers around the idea that the birds have something to say about truth, beauty, and a crazy-creative God. https://www.ornitheology.com/post/ornitheology_explained

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POEM: CRY, MY BELOVED OLIVE TREE!

 

A dew drop,

Rests on an olive leaf's edge,

Caressed by the final exhale,

Of a shattered body's release,

Descending to a dreamless land.

 

A spirited wind,

In a gust of audacity,

unveils death's heavy cloak,

Breathing emptiness into the weary souls,

Adorning with a wreath of hopelessness!

 

A tank,

Unapologetically makes its way,

Through the dusty streets it roams,

Cradling an olive branch,

Plucked hastily in its hurried turns.

 

 Two eyes

Lose their luster to uncanny anguish,

Fixate on the window's pane,

Veiled by a handful of withered olive leaves,

Contemplating an uncertain path ahead.

 

A mighty tank,

Emerges from its fortified den,

Roaring with immense power,

Only to retreat swiftly, masterfully,

like a skilled "war animal."

 

A human,

Unearths a cherished one's remains,

Trapped beneath concrete debris,

Gently drawing back tattered garments,

Whispering, "Cry, my beloved, Cry!"

 

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Photo courtesy- freepik