ABSTRACT
This chapter conceptualises Magizhchi—a Tamil term that signifies joy, happiness, glee, and excitement—made popular by the Tamil film director Pa. Ranjith to understand and evaluate the sensorial signification of his experiments with performance and music (Aadalum-Paadalum) in the filmic medium. Through Magizhchi—an affect which prompts one to move beyond the oppressed past towards an emancipatory future—Ranjith transforms the way Dalit subjectivities are imagined in Indian cinema. By foregrounding the works of the music band that Ranjith initiated, ‘The Casteless Collective’—inspired from the 20th-century anti-caste Tamil intellectual Iyothee Thass—features Gaana (Tamil music form mainly performed by Dalits in urban slums), hip-hop, and fusions of world music and by analysing the song performances in his films such as Atta Kathi (Card Board Knife, 2012), Madras (2014), Kabali (2016), and Kaala (2018), we suggest an anti-caste re-scripting of sensibilities—a ‘becoming-other-than-itself’. Thus, the chapter demonstrates that Ranjith’s interventions not only expose inscriptions of caste but also creatively stage acts of exscription against caste in films.
