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The Dialectic of Dialectical Materialism and Discourse: A Scrutiny of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

The powerful social class exercises its hegemonic practices mainly on the basis of cognitive and discursive strategies. These strategies are accomplished through the exploitation of social knowledge, identities and ideologies, which, for their constitution, owe to the cognitive and discursive tactics themselves. The hegemony of the powerful social groups may, however, be countered when the manipulated individuals come to achieve enough knowledge and realization which protect their cognition from being manipulated further. Moreover, this achieved knowledge and realization also enables them to adapt themselves to the cognitive and discursive practices of the dominant class for the improvement of their socioeconomic position. The paper scrutinizes this notion in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. The study applies Marx’s Dialectical Materialism and van Dijk’s concept of Discourse and Manipulation. Additionally, the latter perspective also works as a model for the research. The study elucidates that the poor-rich divide, which is prevalent in the Indian society, is mainly created by the dominant class through their manipulation of the cognition of the dominated class. It also highlights the productive attempt by a lowest of the low caste individual to become a successful entrepreneur by adapting to and using the same cognitive and discursive tactics as employed against people like him by the powerful social class.