“Rooster Coop” as affective entrapment: Exploring “ugly feelings,” caste, and the psychic violence of neoliberalism in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

Abstract

Existing scholarship on Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008) has primarily examined its
critique of neoliberalism and subalternity, yet the affective dimensions of Balram’s experience
within the entanglement of caste and capitalism remain underexplored. This paper addresses
this lacuna by employing Sianne Ngai’s theory of “ugly feelings”—non-cathartic, dysphoric
emotions that index systemic disenfranchisement—to argue that Balram’s resentment, envy,
and anxiety are not individual pathologies but affective products of structural oppression.
His resentment stems from caste-based humiliation and the hollow promises of Hindu
spirituality; his envy emerges from exclusion from consumerist spaces that privilege upper-
caste mobility; and his anxiety reflects the precarity of replaceability within neoliberal labor
markets. These “ugly feelings” expose the “Rooster Coop” of affective entrapment, where
marginalized subjects both internalize and resist systemic violence. While Balram’s
murderous rebellion stages a rupture from subjugation, his subsequent replication of
exploitative practices underscores neoliberalism’s co-optation of resistance into cycles of
individualized complicity. By situating The White Tiger within affect studies, this paper
illuminates how caste and capitalism intersect to produce psychic precarity, challenging
India’s myth of “shining” modernity. Ultimately, Adiga’s novel critiques neoliberal
individualism, urging a reimagining of liberation beyond atomized success toward collective
reckoning with structural inequities.
Keywords: The White Tiger, Ugly Feelings, Neoliberalism, Caste, Psychic Precarity