Appalling Activism: Gender-Based and Racist Violence and an Aesthetics of Disgust in Leïla Slimani and Mithu Sanyal

Despite its challenging political and aesthetic history, disgust has increasingly functioned as a political tool of audience engagement that intervenes in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. Detecting in Chanson douce (2016) by Leïla Slimani and Identitti (2022) by Mithu Sanyal a literary version of disgust, I propose in this article that the depiction of physical, socio-moral and interpersonal repulsion in the two texts can be aligned with the political engagement of the two writers and that they use fiction subversively as a vehicle for their political commentary and intercession. In an analysis primarily of the gender-based and racist violence in the texts, I draw on the work of José Medina and María Lugones to argue that the ambiguity in disgust lends it, in fiction, the potential to reshape socio-political knowledge and thus to function as a tool for what Miranda Fricker calls ‘epistemic justice’.