Why all the Fuss about Purity?: Un/Touch-ability and the Paradox of Hygienic Bodies

Abstract

Focusing on the question of untouchability and how a discourse of hygiene comes to justify it in the recent times, the paper attempts a brief genealogy tracing the linking of caste and the concept of hygiene. Trying to open up the entanglements that enable such linking, the paper goes deeper into the issues of sedimentation and embodiment that enable such continuity of caste discrimination. With such an approach the paper presents caste as a ‘ghost’ and thus engages further on the contingencies haunting any attempt to theorize a ghost. It is herein that the paper calls for the urgency to engage more critically with the idea-matter embrace (instead of seeing them as detached) that constitutes the elementary aspects of practicing caste: touch, purity and body.

Keywords

• un/touch
• body
• purity
• hygiene
• embodiment
• spectres
• caste