Liminality, Representation, Silence: The Poetics and Politics of Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates the value of silence, located within liminal spaces in Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019). Structured as an informal graphic essay, Doab Dil proffers ironic commentaries on nature, culture, cities, the countryside, history, fiction, work, sleep, insomnia, popular culture, and the quest for meaning in life. In the process, Doab Dil combines text and drawing to construct a postmodernist intertextual mural of juxtaposed quotations, descriptions, and metaphysical reflection on the values of contemporary culture. At the points of these juxtapositions, liminal spaces are created that are characterised by a dense silence. The centrality of the liminal in the creative imagination of Doab Dil is evident in the title that signposts the fertile tract of land found at the confluence of two rivers. Recollecting Homi Bhabha on the liminal as a horizon of possibilities, this paper explores the ways in which the poetic representation of liminality constructs political spaces of critique, which draw on the silence between confluent thoughts on diverse themes for critical reflection. Through literary criticism, the paper investigates the poetics and politics of possibilities in Doab Dil positioned within liminal spaces, and the role of silence as a representational strategy for a metaphysical commentary on reality.