%0 Journal Article
%T The Five
%A Pallavi Rao
%J Journal of Communication Inquiry
%@ 1552-4612
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0196859917736391
%X This article examines the literary celebrity of Indian author Chetan Bhagat and his paratextual articulations in India¡¯s English-language media. It seeks to deconstruct the role of these paratexts in occluding how upper-caste masculinity operates as the normative script in mainstream media discourse. Critically examining Bhagat¡¯s utterances in English-language television news, print newspapers, and social media, I argue that the paratexts enable his authorial persona to be continually constructed in ways that consolidate his caste-patriarchal authority. In the process, these paratexts valorize neoliberal entrepreneurship and narratives of ascent, rendering existing caste hegemonies in India invisible. Bhagat¡¯s use of English also reflects the complex politics of the English language in colonial history, where upper-caste men in service of the empire utilized the linguistic hegemony of English to consolidate their patriarchal and caste dominance. However, I suggest that pockets of awareness operate among Bhagat¡¯s readers and audiences, where subaltern groups have strategically negotiated using this upper-caste masculinized English to forge their own social mobility and empowerment. Bhagat¡¯s performance of celebrity has to thus be seen as being enacted within a complex English-speaking milieu, which is rife with caste and gender power struggles
%K postcolonialism
%K hegemonic masculinity
%K textual analysis
%K critical and cultural studies
%K media discourse
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0196859917736391