Othering the Minority

Abstract

To Michel Foucault, truth does not have an absolute existence; rather truth is a construction which assumes its shape by the power practice through different discourses. Contemporary representation of the minority community in Bangladeshi films and novels seems to indicate an attempt to construct an unintended 'truth' which seems to inspire the process of othering the minority. Some films and novels created both after and before 1971, tend to present the misery of the minority community of this zone with sympathetic affection. The process seems to resist the othering or at least tries to create a sensibility against this othering among the audience or readers. While doing so, the process itself paradoxically contains the possibility of encouraging that very othering. This dissertation tries to investigate whether the presentation of the minority community of Bangladesh and East Pakistan in written and visual discourses resist the othering of the minority or becomes part of the 'regime' of representation that treats the minority community as other. When a film or a novel tries to sympathize with the minority community, it has to re-create the othering the community faces in real life situation. Repetition of this re-creation in different discourses produces the unintended construction of the 'truth' which establishes the real life situation to be 'natural' to the audience. The effect a film or a novel creates gets included in the entire integration of similar experiences of the audience. The othering of the minority community can not avoid the possibility of assuming the shape of 'reality' through cross references to the same 'fact'. It is to be investigated whether the cross references betray their intended purpose.