S1E1 Supriya Subramani: Background Notes

From: Supriya Subramani <>
To: Pat McConville <>
Subject: Re: Invitation to interview on Concept : Art podcast

Hi Pat, 

Reflecting on how art has influenced me, I’m afraid to say I can’t share art which directly influenced my work (you can’t find direct link in my research), but it definitely has informed me the way I view the world, process and interact with the immediate world.

I was also raised in a low-caste family with phases of poverty, and primarily from a lower socio-economic background. So I didn’t have access to ‘mainstream art’. In India most art representation has caste, gender and class dynamics. So, most of the art, whether it is poetry or artwork, that I am drawn to resists caste, gender, class and patriarchy. 

For example, Arivu and others from The Casteless Collective 

Poets and Authors: Perumal Murugan, Meena Kandasamy, Sukirtharani 

In my masters education and training, Theatre of Oppressed profoundly moved me and I still use it in my teaching and training. 

My other safe anchor is black feminist works (bell hooks is my favourite!). These works help me process my own personal experiences and rage at structural injustice within India, and elsewhere that I have lived. In addition to my current work on belonging, I have looked at micro-inequities, moral habitus, passive patient, social construction of incompetency, and reflexivity in the past. I have been trying to emphasize in all of my published works the way micro-level injustices are normalized in a system, and how they affect interactions, as well as one’s sense of self-respect. As part of my current book project, I am striving to tie the threads together, emphasizing the epistemic and affective injustice of the little acts of disrespect (microinequities). 

I thought I should check in with you if this is something which you would like to pursue. I totally understand if this is not something which you are exploring in your podcasts currently.

Thank you,

Supriya