‘What Good is Poetry in Desolate Times?’

Abstract

The contemporary socio-political situation in Manipur has been studied in its breadth and depth by social scientists. As a social anthropologist examining the process of militarization in sacred sites in my PhD thesis I have been facing difficulties in the representation of the field. In doing ‘fieldwork under fire’, the factual contents of ethnography often have to be re-presented through fiction, especially when the lives of informants depend on what factual details are revealed.