Militant Women: Body Politics and Desire in Meena Kandasamy's Ms. Militancy

  • Unique Paper ID: 193609
  • PageNo: 652-655
  • Abstract:
  • Meena Kandasamy's Ms. Militancy (2010) poems "Body Politics," "Random Access Man," and "A Cunning Stunt" explore body politics and desire as sites of patriarchal, casteist, and linguistic violence against women. Women's bodies become objects, tied up and renamed from "cunt" to caste-laden "seat," enduring verbal invasion as ongoing sexual control. Desire shifts from marital starvation to bold rebellion, fake coldness and pleasure-seeking turning harm into resistance. Kandasamy uses raw language to expose atrocities, refuse euphemisms, and reclaim body and words from men's judgment. The poems immerse readers in Dalit women's trauma and fight back. This study focuses on body politics and desire but excludes mythology or nationalism, suggesting future work on violence and emancipation.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{193609,
        author = {Budagatla Kalyani and Dr. N. Solomon Benny},
        title = {Militant Women: Body Politics and Desire in Meena Kandasamy's Ms. Militancy},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {10},
        pages = {652-655},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=193609},
        abstract = {Meena Kandasamy's Ms. Militancy (2010) poems "Body Politics," "Random Access Man," and "A Cunning Stunt" explore body politics and desire as sites of patriarchal, casteist, and linguistic violence against women. Women's bodies become objects, tied up and renamed from "cunt" to caste-laden "seat," enduring verbal invasion as ongoing sexual control. Desire shifts from marital starvation to bold rebellion, fake coldness and pleasure-seeking turning harm into resistance. Kandasamy uses raw language to expose atrocities, refuse euphemisms, and reclaim body and words from men's judgment. The poems immerse readers in Dalit women's trauma and fight back. This study focuses on body politics and desire but excludes mythology or nationalism, suggesting future work on violence and emancipation.},
        keywords = {body politics, desire, sexual violence, Dalit feminism, linguistic domination, patriarchal control, erotic resistance,},
        month = {March},
        }

Cite This Article

Kalyani, B., & Benny, D. N. S. (2026). Militant Women: Body Politics and Desire in Meena Kandasamy's Ms. Militancy. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(10), 652–655.

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