Poetics of Pain: Writing the Memory of Partition

Publisher : Palgrave McMillan

This article explores the use of emotive narration as a strategy within Partition literature which encourages subaltern expression. The recent development of Affect studies and of the ‘affective turn’ in different fields and disciplines (notably history) offer new perspectives in the comprehension of tragedies as at once individual and collective experiences.This sheds new light on how memory is constructed in Partition narratives, especially when personal experience can often remain subservient (as was particularly the case for Partition) to ideological ‘grand’narratives, within which individual, and even more so collective emotions, have been considered as interfering in (or ‘troubling’ to, in Alok Bhalla’s words) more ‘objective’ narratives. Highlighting the imbricated practices of emotion and memory, this chapter will discuss how literature can offer a creative insight into the experience of collective tragedy that should and can be considered alongside the of cial archive of Partition history.

Updated on 15/12/2017

Poetics of Pain: Writing the Memory of Partition Partition and the Practice of Memory

Poetics of Pain: Writing the Memory of Partition

Partition and the Practice of Memory