Before the Battle’ : Karthika Naïr in Conversation with Laetitia Zecchini Chapitre d’ouvrage - Octobre 2021

In the following interview, which also continues previous conversations (including one conducted for a special issue of the journal South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Naïr 2020a] we talk about the different worlds and arts straddled by Karthika Naïr ; about the experience of diaspora and nomadism ; about the city of Paris, and her relationship to her two countries, France and India ; about how “home” can attach itself to certain specific spaces and places ; about the “bastardized, eclectic imaginaire” she claims as her own ; the partnerships and collaborations that sustain her writing and her sense of belonging ; about the importance of dance and fable ; how the experience of vulnerability and living with a “dysfunctional body” has impacted her writing ; about literary activism and how literary texts can “respond” to violence, to terror and damage, can “give voice” to pain and also chronicle the wonder of living.