Disgusted Spaces and Concealed Caste: Understanding Affective-Spatial Segregation in India

The research paper aims to understand the delicate entanglement of affective-sensorial experiences, caste and residential segregation through an ethnographic study of a Dalit housing colony in Kerala, India. Recent developments in the theory on caste defines it as an order of affect; meaning a social form that attributes and attaches peoples to different affective sensorial experiences according to their status. As noted by scholars like Joel Lee, caste in this sense works as a semiotic ensemble which is capable of effectively “placing” people to particular spaces wielding various affective-sensorial experiences according to their caste status. He further points that, social relations and spatial practices reproduce the caste hierarchy of “places” by moulding the built environment to dictate how the space of a certain caste should be smelt, touched, seen or tasted (Lee, 2017; Lefebvre, 1992). Historically, caste was practiced through strict residential segregation and Dalits (people who were kept at the lowest rung of caste hierarchy) in this regard had to inhabit spaces wielding qualities such as disgust, filth and dirt. Setting it as a context, the paper engages with the role of caste in emplacing the habitation of Dalits near hazardous zones like garbage dumbs and railway tracks in the current era. Drawing on ethnographic accounts from the field, the paper makes an argument that the contemporary forms of residential segregation, especially spatial exclusion of Dalits in India is very much influenced by a “caste-state nexus”, were the state conceals its policies of ghettoisation under the techno-managerialism. Embodied methodologies were employed in the field to specifically tap and understand affective- sensorial experiences of people. Grounding the research on these methods, the paper also calls for an embodied approach towards understanding various forms of residential segregation which are historically rooted social stratification systems like caste and class.