Cultural Alterity Cultural Alterity in Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man
Authors: Maryann Rochelle 
Published: January 2025

Culture and society are closely related. It is very important as it plays a crucial role in shaping and forming an identity and determines the social environment of a nation. In course of time each society is made to think and believe that the practices and beliefs they have carried forth are right and ought to be followed. Though people are educated, they still adhere to the stringent cultural practices. This is because of the environment and the thoughts instilled in them right from the time of their birth.Cultures have evolved from time immemorial. In course of time each society is made to think and believe that the practices and beliefs they have carried forth are right and ought to be followed. Though people are educated, they still adhere to the stringent cultural practices. This is because of the environment and the thoughts instilled in them right from the time of their birth.The theory of alterity has become a philosophical concept that is an offshoot of post-modernism. The notion of alterity holds good to understand the formation as individuals and social beings. Alterity has a wide range of approaches to epistemology, psychoanalysis social and cultural theory. In the contemporary world everyone encounters the ‘other’ which has increased through globalization and mass media.There are eight dualisms of alterity (1) the popular other (2) the lower-class other (3) the black other (4) Third World other (5) the female other (6) the national or ethnic other (7) oppressed parts of subjectivity as the other and (8) somewhere else as the other place. In this way the tag leads us to see the colonial other which is never layered without differences and further places him or her in the margins when representing them.Cultural alterity is that which is associated with different cultures, gender, classes and other social branches and the manner in which society thinks about them and views them. In the contemporary thinking, alterity focuses on ‘otherness’. The ‘other’ in scholarship includes the Jews, homosexuals, insane, sick, women and other heterogeneous groups who have been commonly marginalized. The construction of the otherness can be detected on the basis of suffering and injustice.This paper examines the play ‘Dance Like A Man’ by Mahesh Dattani is based on the theory of cultural alterity. This play discusses how even the male is subdued under patriarchy even though they want to break free from such stringent norms. There are rules drawn how a girl should be and a boy should be. What each gender is expected to learn. In this play Jayaraj is a Bharatanatyam dancer and is supressed by his father because according to his father Amritlal dance is only for women and not for men because he feels his son emits effeminate expressions. This this the cultural frame which is instilled in the minds of people from inception and people think in those terms. This paper shows how Jayaraj is seen and treated as the ‘other’ by his father and because he is seen as ‘the other’ he becomes a drunkard and loses his son thus he becomes an unsuccessful dancer.