Prashant P - Siddheshwari

Disrupting Narrative:
Mani Kaul’s Siddheshwari and the Challenge to Dominant Narrative

Forms
Prashant Parvataneni
Christ University
January, 2015
Introduction
• “There is no difference between what a book talks
about and how it is made” (Deleuze and Guattari 4)
• Is it enough for a work of art to talk about a minority or
a marginalised subject?
• Or should a new way of telling itself has to be
invented?
• Any form of resistance requires a radically new idiom
of expression. For eg. Jazz, Dhrupad.
• What can be the aesthetic challenge to the dominant
form of cinematic narratives – defined by dominant
ideologies and normalized over time?
• What is the form of alternative cinema? How does it
challenge the divisive structures and binaries of a
traditional narrative?
The Text – Siddheshwari(1989)
Directed by Mani Kaul
• What it is about (content) – the life and music

of Siddheshwari Devi (1908–1976), thumri
singer from Banares. (Superficial
understanding).
• It is also about the representational traditions
– of myths, legends and lores – and how they
position a women singer/performer.
• Diffused notion of ‘subject’
• How it is made (form) – ‘Beyond narrative, between
forms’ (Gangar).
– Documentary – Fiction – Docu-drama – all three
forms and yet it is none of them.
– Non linearity without conjunctions – diffusion versus
intercutting.
– Intercutting – ordering multiplicity for unity.
Diffusion - refers to the process by which molecules
intermingle as a result of their kinetic energy of
random motion (“Diffusion”).
– Improvisational form – fragments assembled
randomly – arranged in an elusive pattern.
– Actors do not become characters, they simply
perform – they are models presenting the
characters.
Same actor plays several parts.
Objective
• Study the form of Siddheshwari,
– to find the significance of disrupting
traditional modes of cinematic narration,
– to arrive at a possible form of marginal
cinema or a minor cinema, a la Minor
Literature (Deleuze and Guattari).
Methodology
• Qualitative
• Analytical, argumentative
• Methods employed –
– Textual analysis
– Close reading
– Visual methods
– Formal analysis (primary)
in conjunction with thematic reading.
Theoretical Framework
• Laura Mulvey – Destruction of

pleasure as a radical weapon.
• Deleuze and Guattari
– Rhizome
– Minor Literature
The Argument
• Resistance and disruption of the
conventional modes of narration in cinema
can be read as resistance against the
oppressive structures.
• The form of Siddheshwari challenges
occluding ideas of categorization, causality,
centrality, differentiation and division.
Anti-Category
• Categorisation leads to comfortable
fixities
• Genres as categories
• Siddheshwari resists categorisation
– Documentary or Fiction?
Self-reflexivity – analysis of text, within
the text – politics of representation
– Mythical or historical?
Myth as history and history as myth
– Can real and imagined be separated?
– A strong case against segregation.
Breaking the Cause-Effect Paradigm
• Freeing the film from the burden and comfort of

plot
• Character development – each aspect of life exists
to define a final unified whole
• Fragmentation – each fragment becomes important
in itself – immediately related to politics
• “The rhizome connects any point to any other
point” (Deleuze and Guattari 21)
• Identity not product of single or a series of causal
factors but comes out of a dense diffusion of
multiplicity
Decentered
• Questions the very idea of something being
central to a text and other things being
peripheral
• Doesn’t turn Siddheshwari’s life into a central
subject of the film and mythical and folk-loric
allusions as peripheral or background
• They collide, fuse and yet remain suspended in
their own fragmented state
• Same actor plays the role of Siddheshwari
Devi, an Apsara(from Mahabharat), and
Chapala (from the lore of Chandrakanta)
Undivided Space, Undifferentiated
Time
• All the several strands of the narrative
happen on the same plane
• Avoids compartmentalisation of time
as past present future
• Questions the use of black and white
and colour differentiation as a means
to divide time and space
Towards a Minor Cinema
• Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of

Minor Literature –
- Language is affected by a high coefficient
of deterritorialization.
- Everything in minor literatures is political.
- Everything in minor literatures takes a
collective value. (16-17)
Inferences
• Forms of occlusion – catagorisation, differentiation,
segregation have become normalised into the very narrative
tradition.
• Siddheshwari by disrupting these modes of expression
challenges the majority aesthetic.
• By deliberately becoming difficult and not easily penetrable it
provokes the viewer into an active dialogue and engagement
with the immediate politics – rather than passive
understanding and consumption of plot or story
• It is not anti-narrative, but calls for reinvention of narrative.
• Its form is not divorced from the fragmented and displaced
life of Siddheshwari Devi– but such easy and simplistic
relation is not given readily to the audience.
Limitations and Scope for Further
Research
• Issues of viability of minor cinema in the
context of market economy of film production
needs to be inquired into
• Modes of expressing dissent and resistance in
other art forms like theatre, visual art, music
could be compared to cinema to find points of
intersection and departure.
• A critical look at who constitutes or who can
constitute the audience for this kind of
cinema is necessary.
Selected Bibliography

Deleuze, Gilles , and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. 1st ed.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. 3-25. Print.
--- Kafka Toward a Minor Literature. 1st ed. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1975. 16-27. Print.
Gangar, Amrit. "Beyond Narrative, Between Forms." ART India. Jul
2014: 15-19. Print.
James, Caryn. " A Modernist Approach to Biography." New York
Times 30 Sep 1990, Online ed. Web. 6 Jan. 2015.
Kaul, Mani. "Beneath the Surface: Cinematography and Time." Indian
Horizons. Jan 2008: 8-12. Print.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narratvie Cinema. 1989. Nortan
Anthology of Theory & Criticism. Ed.Vincent B. Leitch. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 2181-85. Print.
Srinivasan, Shrikanth. "Films of Mani Kaul." The Seventh Art.
Wordpress, 09 Jun 2011. Web. 7 Jan. 2015.
Selected Filmography

Bhumika. Dir. Shyam Benegal. Blaze Productions, 1977. Film.
Nishant. Dir. Shyam Benegal. Blaze Productions, 1975. Film.
Rabindranath Tagore. Dir. Satyajit Ray. Films Division, 1961. Film.
Siddheshwari. Dir. Mani Kaul. Films Division, 1989. Film.
Thank You
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Disrupting Narrative:

Mani Kaul’s Siddheshwari and the Challenge to Dominant Narrative

• What it is about (content) – the life and music

• Laura Mulvey – Destruction of

• Freeing the film from the burden and comfort of

• Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of

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