B. Theory of Transgression
Arundhati Roy once remarked that transgression is one key point of the novel. Ammu’s transgression as the resistance towards the Love Law that has been
internalized in the society is an important point of the chains of happenings that keep the plot going.
To transgress, according to Chris Jenks in Transgression 2003, is more than just to violate or to infringe. To violate or to infringe means to go beyond the bounds
or limits set by a commandment or law or convention. But transgression includes the work of ideology and reflexive act.
…to go beyond the bounds or limits set by a commandment or law or convention, it is to violate or infringe. But to transgress is also more
than this, it is to announce and even laudate the commandment, the law or the convention. Transgression is a deeply reflexive act of denial
and affirmation. Analytically, then, transgression serves as an extremely sensitive vector in assessing the scope, direction and
compass of any social theory, as we shall see 2.
Transgression, according to Jenks, is far more serious than just to go beyond the law. When one commits a transgression, one denies an ideology while at the same
time, affirms the ideology that one believes. The actions that Ammu conducts in the novel show her denial to the ideology that interpellates the society in which she lives.
On the other hand, her rage affirms her own ideology that submits to the wants of her biology as a woman.
According to Jenks, society becomes the playground for transgressors. When individuals live with each other, limitations become everyday experience. According
to Jenks Constraint is a constant experience in our action, it needs to be to
render us social. Interestingly enough, however, the limits to our experience and the taboos that police them are never simply imposed
from the outside; rather, limits to behaviour are always personal responses to moral imperatives that stem from the inside. This means
that any limit on conduct carries with it an intense relationship with the desire to transgress that limit 7.
From the quotation above, it can be concluded that desire that comes with biology becomes the force to transgression that opposes the dominant ideology. Jenks
also stated that transgressions are intertwined with the insecurity that enters our consciousness. Our consciousness is always in constant ambivalent position because
it always regards our relationship with others as well as the ownership of our desires Jenks 5. Also, new transgressions will always appear every day through history,
because the transgressions will test the social construction of the society by conflicting it with the individuals’ desire, and therefore negotiates the limits of both
sides. Jenks believe that fresh questions are continuously raised about the relationship
between the core of social life and the periphery, the center and the margins, identity and difference, the normal and the deviant, and the possible rules that could
conceivably bind us into a collectivity Jenks 5. Therefore, what is normal and what is deviant somehow collide in a blur line, and the debate of their differentiation is
perpetual. According to Jenks, simple societies express their moral boundaries through
mythologies. Recent societies, however, have celebrated the magnetic antipathy between order and excess by getting through many periods of philosophy 7. The
possibility of continuing process of these periods occur with the help of transgressors of any generation that perpetually challenging to break boundaries and setting up new
limitation according to their own perspective. Transgression, therefore, is a part of social process, as well as a part of individual psyche 197.
A transgression, however, cannot be measured Jenks 175. A transgression cannot be valued as greater, less, better, or worse. It is tangible only if it is
materialized by the public as celebrated or cursed moments. Jenks gives examples of Nazi Holocaust and September 11th. When a transgression assumes tangibility,
having texture, and clear significance, it becomes criminalized. The transgressor, for example Ammu in the novel, becomes a monster Jenks 190.
Therefore, transgressing the limit is a normal process in the flow of history, as well as criminalizing the transgressor. In this case, Ammu is considered the
transgressor in the society, and therefore criminalized by the society. However, if it is seen from the other perspective, can the Love Law, the dominant ideology of the
society, considered as the transgressor? On what basis does a system in the society transgress the limitation of one’s biology?
C. Theory of Ideological State Apparatuses
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