Revolution in Space: A Lefebvrian Analysis of Spatial Production in Meena Kandasamy’s <i>The Gypsy Goddess</i>

Abstract

 In literary studies, space is increasingly recognized as a crucial dimension in the construction and contestation of power, identity, and ideology. No longer a passive backdrop, space emerges as an active site of social production, memory, and resistance. This paper examines the spatial politics in Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess (2014) through Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the spatial triad – perceived, conceived, and lived space. Kandasamy’s fictional retelling of the 1968 massacre in Kilvenmani (a place in Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu, India) functions as a cartographic critique of caste violence and rural oppression in Tamil Nadu, India, illustrating how space is both shaped by and instrumental in maintaining structural injustice. Drawing on Lefebvre’s assertion that views social space as a socially produced construct, the study explores how physical environments – fields, huts, and state institutions – are saturated with ideological power, historical trauma, and subaltern resistance. The novel engages in a process of spatial reclamation, transforming Kilvenmani into what Edward Soja defines as ‘Thirdspace’ – a lived, imagined, and contested geography. This paper contends that the text is not merely a narrative of protest, but a radical spatial intervention that reimagines rural geographies as contested terrains of structural violence, political memory, and revolutionary potential.