Through a Foucauldian reading of Bama’s Sangati (2005) and P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change (2006a, 2006b), this paper attempts to delineate the permeation and maintenance of disciplinary power in the social structure and assertion of patriarchal politics in the subjugation of Dalit female bodies. The detrimental politics of patriarchal discourse, the paper argues, degrades the existence of Dalit women, and excludes them from the equation of power relations by delimiting their access to society’s productive resources and restricting their sexuality. Disciplinary power, which acts as a patriarchal tool, prescribes acceptable gestures and required behaviour, and through constant surveillance normalizes a dominant male order. It reduces Dalit women’s existence into an amorphous property, readily mutilated and moulded under the whims of a phallocentric order. Discursive practices further constitute practices of body politics, making the female body an object of active site of political struggle. The paper studies Sangati and The Grip of Change as literary exemplars to demonstrate how disciplinary power, as underscored by Foucault’s discourse analysis, intervenes and determines the life of Dalit women. It not only lays bare the covert body politics of patriarchy with the unfiltered depiction of women’s exploitation and atrocities, but also represents a paradigm shift by advocating ways of emancipation for Dalit women.

通过福柯式阅读巴马的Sangati (2005) 和 P. Sivakami 的The Grip of Change(2006a, 2006b)，本文试图描绘规训权力在社会结构中的渗透和维持，以及在征服达利特女性身体中父权政治的主张。该论文认为，父权话语的有害政治贬低了达利特妇女的存在，并通过限制她们获得社会生产资源和限制她们的性行为，将她们排除在权力关系之外。作为父权制工具的纪律权力规定了可接受的姿态和必要的行为，并通过不断的监视使占主导地位的男性秩序正常化。它将达利特妇女的存在减少为一种无定形的财产，很容易在以阳具为中心的秩序的心血来潮下被肢解和塑造。话语实践进一步构成了身体政治的实践，使女性身体成为政治斗争的活跃场所。论文研究Sangati和The Grip of Change作为文学范例，展示了福柯的话语分析所强调的规训权力如何干预和决定达利特妇女的生活。它不仅通过对妇女剥削和暴行的未经过滤的描绘暴露了父权制的隐蔽身体政治，而且还代表了一种倡导达利特妇女解放方式的范式转变。