Title: Mediating Rape: The Nirbhaya Effect in the Creative and Digital Arts
Abstract: While references to Nirbhaya, referring to the brutal gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi 2012, have been plentiful, less attention has been paid to creative representations on the subject. In this article, I consider how the atrocity has been mediated through multiple outlets in India as part of a reinvigorated aesthetics of grief, anger, critique, and protest against sexual violence. Building on earlier feminist modes of artistic engagement, I consider the "Nirbhaya effect" through outlets such as online films, canvas art, posters, photography, murals, comic books, satirical skits, and staged interventions on the streets that have been described as social experiments. These creative outlets may be considered in terms of five overlapping registers: memorialization, affirmative solidarity, ironic provocations, rescripting the master narrative, and sensationalization. Altogether, they indicate the many potentials and limitations of a violent wound in the social fabric, channeled through the creative arts and digital media.