49. Raj Sree

Abstract 49
Raj Sree                                                                                                                             

Post Memory as a Site of Resistance: The Tradition of Dissent in Partition Fiction

Abstract

Caught as we are in the discourses of resistance, sexuality, abject, and the like, it is high time to theorize art and literature which follows the tradition of dissent. My paper attempts to foreground the concept of post memory with regard to select Partition narratives from the perspective of trauma theory. I argue that post memory is a site of resistance as far as Partition is concerned.  This paper further raises the following research questions: Can the memory of Partition be transformed into action and resistance? What do we owe the victims? How can we best carry their stories forward without calling attention to ourselves? The burgeoning of genocides and collective traumas at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, and their growing effects, have made these questions ever more pertinent and urgent.

Trauma theory is a discourse of the unrepresentable, a discourse of the event or object that destabilizes language, consciousness and perceptions. The tumultuous events in Indian history left behind legacies of trauma which is a ‘time delayed and negotiated process’. The bodily, psychic, and emotional impact of trauma and its aftermath, the ways in which one trauma can be recalled, or reactivated, become part of Partition narratives which testify the relevance of post memory.  Hirsch argues that the memory of a past that a person has never lived can persist, though it has ceased to exist, because many second-generation survivors feel compelled to “re-member, to re-build, to re-incarnate, to replace, and to repair” (243).This is generally referred to as post memory.

…bubbles of memories, pieces of vague reminiscences coming all together without texture, a bit grey. Without order, they were loose series, colours without contours, lights without brightness, lines without objects. Fleeting. The black night of exile. History in pieces. (The Wanderer 5)

These are the things which are highlighted while referring to post memory. But my paper demonstrates how post memory becomes a site of resistance.