The Wound That Does Not Close: Caste Hegemony, Collective Trauma, and the Symbolic Universe of Mari Selvaraj

Abstract

Mari Selvaraj has emerged as one of the most significant voices in contemporary Tamil cinema. Across five films-Pariyerum Perumal (2018), Karnan (2021), Maamannan (2023), Vaazhai (2024), and Bison Kaalamaadan (2025)-he constructs a sustained, deeply personal cinematic universe that maps the psychic, social, and historical wounds of caste oppression in southern Tamil Nadu. This paper applies Trauma Theory, as elaborated by Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman, and Ron Eyerman, alongside New Historicism, to examine how Selvaraj translates lived Dalit experience into mythic, symbolic film language. Special attention is paid to the recurring motif of animals-dogs, donkeys, pigs, cows, and bison-as totemic figures that incarnate both the suffering and the latent force of the oppressed. The paper also analyses how Selvaraj fuses folk religion, mythology, and Ambedkarite ideology to produce films that are simultaneously a dirge and a declaration. By situating his work within the broader tradition of Dalit and anti-caste cinema in India, including the films of Pa. Ranjith and Nagraj Manjule, this paper argues that Selvaraj’s oeuvre constitutes what may be called a ‘cinema of assertion’: a body of work in which trauma is neither resolved nor aestheticised for the comfort of upper-caste viewers, but is instead weaponised into cultural and political resistance.

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