New World, No World: Seeking Utopia in Padmanabhan's Harvest

Abstract

This essay examines the theoretical and practical implications of performance as a utopian gesture, particularly with regard to postcolonial drama. Analyzing Manjula Padmanabhan's futuristic play, Harvest, as a case study, I argue that ‘utopia’ is a crucial critical concept for postcolonial dramatic practice because it stands for the collision and convergence of aesthetic and political interests, using the body itself as a site for representation and resistance. The play explores the extreme outcome of the international trade in human organs as a metaphor for neocolonialism and the constraints of postcolonial societies rent apart by economic inequalities. In this, it presents a moment of personal moral reckoning as a paradigmatic marker for an entire culture's confrontation with its utopian desires and their consequences. Harvest reflects the utopian impulse of modern drama masked by dystopic expression: it demands a differently imagined and shaped future, even as it chronicles the collapse of utopian visions in absolutist excess.