“[S]titched Together by Threads of Light”: Perturbatory Narration, Queer Necropolitics as Biopower, and Transversality in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

This chapter explores Arundhati Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It argues that Roy’s novel works transversally, moving across various subject positions different from her own, as a means of expressing her political solidarities with the plights of India’s constructed ‘others.’ The chapter engages the book’s challenging form, proposing that Roy’s vexation with the novel as a genre and her prolificness as a non-fiction writer have led her to create a ‘perturbatory narration’ querying truth and fiction, especially regarding the conflicted Valley of Kashmir. The article also queers the prominent notion of necropolitics, showing how the transversal community of misfits at the Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services challenge the contours of Indian nationalism. Lastly, the novel’s embrace of a three-way form of motherhood beyond bloodlines is interpreted as a hopeful gesture toward India’s more just and more socially diverse future.

This chapter is affiliated to the Research Project ‘Bodies in Transit 2’ (Ref. FFI2017-84555-C2-1-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the European Regional Development Fund, and the Spanish Research Agency. I also wish to acknowledge the kind mentoring of Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir, whose sharp reading of Roy’s novel and generous guidance on Kashmir scholarship have been highly instrumental to my own analysis.