Resisting Erasure: Hereditary Women Performers, Tamil Cinema, and the Politics of Counter-Archives

Abstract

This paper engages with the lives and cultural legacies of women from hereditary performance traditions (mischaracterised as “devadasis”), examining how their histories have been systematically erased or distorted within hegemonic archival practices. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this study interrogates early Tamil cinema as an alternative, counter-archival space where these women resisted marginalisation and left an indelible mark on South Asian cultural production. By drawing on film magazines, cinematic records, oral histories, and the gaps and silences within these materials, the research critiques the politics of historical representation that obscure their contributions. The paper situates its analysis within the broader framework of archival violence—how state and societal institutions suppressed and subsumed these women’s voices to align with colonial, nationalist, and casteist agendas. It argues that early Tamil cinema (1930-1950) provided a platform for these women to contest the rigid Brahminical and patriarchal reordering of society. Their performances as dancers, singers, and actors embodied forms of cultural resistance, asserting their agency within a rapidly transforming modernist landscape. Simultaneously, the paper explores the displacement of these women in favour of upper-caste, “respectable” ideals and connects this phenomenon to the silences perpetuated within conventional archives.