ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ambiguous cultural space that darkness occupies and creates in Indian villages. Darkness fosters practices that lack cultural acceptance; it is therefore negative for some, but positive for those engaging in these practices as it gives them refuge from the society. While the curtain of darkness produces a space that the subaltern ‘other’ uses to passively and actively resist the social boundaries, it also creates an affect where inhabiting this space becomes a signifier of moral perversion.
Those inhabiting darkness are understood as socially degraded and morally corrupt as they engage in smoking, drinking or premarital love. Therefore, darkness has a double effect. One the one hand, it causes and exacerbates ‘othering’. The gendered and casteised ‘other’, that is forced to inhabit darkness, is considered morally degraded and of a lower honour status. On the other hand, darkness gives the subaltern ‘other’ an opportunity to subvert the social norms and conventions. It becomes a space for love and freedom. The chapter is primarily based on a nine-month ethnographic research into various sources of electricity and illumination in five villages in the Indian state of Bihar between 2012 and 2013.
