Traversing the Contours of Rationality and Embodied Consciousness in Amruta Patil’s Aranyaka

Abstract

Graphic narratives, often considered under the purview of popular culture, demand serious consideration due to their multi-modal engagement with the visual-verbal dynamics of meaning-making. The semiotics of the graphic medium, which includes the lines, colours, panels, and gutters along with the verbal text, elevates its potential to communicate deeply complex and pertinent issues that are often difficult to articulate through text alone. Amrutha Patil's Aranyaka demonstrates the ability of this contemporary and popular medium to represent the phenomenological and embodied perception of the world. This is delineated through three powerful female figures: Katyayani (The Large), Maitreyi (The Fig), and Gargi (The Weaver), whose phenomenological awareness is contrasted with the rational perception of Yajnavalkya. Each one of them depicts an interconnected yet distinct embodied way of perceiving the world. Through a close reading of the three female characters, the paper argues that phenomenological perception is not a contrast to rational thought but a complementary and relational way of awareness of the self and the world. The paper further argues that the graphic medium, with its visual-verbal interplay, is integral to communicating the shift from abstract reasoning to embodied consciousness as an alternate way of apprehending the world.