States of Affect: Trauma in Partition/Post-Partition South Asia
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STATES OF AFFECT: TRAUMA IN PARTITION/POST-PARTITION SOUTH ASIA By Rituparna Mitra A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of English – Doctor of Philosophy 2015 ABSTRACT STATES OF AFFECT: TRAUMA IN PARTITION/POST-PARTITION SOUTH ASIA By Rituparna Mitra The Partition of the Indian subcontinent – into India and Pakistan in 1947 – was one of the crucial moments marking the break between the colonial and postcolonial era. My project is invested in exploring the Partition not merely in terms of the events of August 1947, but as an ongoing process that continues to splinter political, cultural, emotional and sexual life-worlds in South Asia. My dissertation seeks to map analytical pathways to locate the Partition and the attendant formations of minoritization and sectarian violence as continuing, unfolding processes that constitute postcolonial nation-building. It examines the far-reaching presence of these formations in current configurations of politics, culture and subjectivity by mobilizing the interdisciplinary scope of affect-mediated Trauma and Memory Studies and Postcolonial Studies, in conjunction with literary analysis. My project draws on a wide range of cultural artifacts such as poetry, cantillatory performance, mourning rituals, testimonials, archaeological ruins, short stories and novels to develop a heuristic and affective re-organization of post-Partition South Asia. It seeks to illuminate through frameworks of memory, melancholia, trauma, affect and postcoloniality how the ongoing effects of the past shape the present, which in turn, offers us ways to reimagine the future. This dissertation reaches out to recent work developing a vernacular framework to analyze violence, trauma and loss in South Asia. Critics of trauma theory argue that clinical approaches developed in specific Euro-American socio-cultural contexts often write over postcolonial systems of knowledge-making, mourning, and recovery. Ananya Kabir, Kumkum Sangari, and other postcolonial critics are seeking to develop a vernacularized framework to view violence, trauma and loss in South Asia. It is at this challenging threshold of affect-mediated postcoloniality and trauma studies that my work asks to be located. Copyright by RITUPARNA MITRA 2015 To Ma, Baba, Onur v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my Dissertation Co-Directors Kenneth Harrow and Jyotsna Singh without whom this dissertation would not have been finished. Their sustained support, guidance, breadth of vision and intellectual integrity helped this project evolve through its ups and downs. The vastness of their theoretical and critical grasp pushed me continuously to ask deeper questions and strengthen my scholarship. Their vital contribution as close readers, as advisors and as intellectual exemplars is equaled by their humaneness and compassion. I owe them many intellectual and personal debts. I would like to thank the other members of my Guidance Committee for their intellectual support – Swarnavel Pillai for his incisive comments and suggestions that honed my interdisciplinary approach and Salah Hassan for consistently pushing me to ground my theoretical moorings more firmly. I would also like to acknowledge Ann Larabee and Soma Chaudhuri for their guidance at the early stages of the project. I would like to thank the Department of English – especially the Graduate Chairs Ellen Pollack, Scott Juengel, Stephen Rachman and Zarena Aslami – for supporting me at crucial phases. Michigan State University has, through its many resources, provided me with valuable support at challenging junctures and I would like to acknowledge my health teams, especially, for helping me manage chronic conditions while pursuing my academics. My debt to MSU’s and Lansing’s many support services remains substantial. I have been fortunate to have been a part of a vibrant, compassionate, intellectually stimulating community of fellow graduate students, whose scholarship, pedagogy and focus have always motivated. I thank every one of them for their generosity, energy and comradeship. I would like to express gratitude to my parents for their support and understanding that has grown manifold through the years and for the life skills of determination, hard work, and integrity they have nurtured in me. My extended family in India, vi the US and Turkey have been an enduring source of support and strength. Finally, I would like to thank Onur, for partnership, nourishment, creativity and love; above all, for the shared joy of exploring intellectual worlds. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Partition and Affect-Mediated Postcolonial Trauma Studies..........................1 Accessing Partition through Affect and Trauma Studies...................................................12 Ongoing Partition...............................................................................................................23 Accessing State Violence through Affect and Trauma Studies.........................................27 CHAPTER 1: Re-thinking Trauma: Love and Longing in Amrita Pritam....................................35 Introduction: Grief, Memory and Belonging Post- Partition.............................................35 Partition and the emotional life of the nation-state............................................................43 Vernacular Affects in Amrita Pritam’s “Waris Shah”.......................................................54 Deploying ishq/viraha-prem (love) as Partition lament....................................................59 Love and loss as political effects.......................................................................................67 Critical mourning and viraha: Re-contextualizing the elegy in Pritam.............................72 Framing Partition trauma through the “vernacular”..........................................................79 Listening as critical memorialization.................................................................................84 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................92 CHAPTER 2: Palimpsests of Trauma: Excavating Memories in Qurratulain Hyder...................94 Introduction: Memorial Landscapes in South Asia...........................................................94 Theoretical Framing of Postcolonial Trauma, Affect and Partition Studies...................102 Recasting Partition Studies through Affect.....................................................................103 Summary of Sita Betrayed...............................................................................................107 Trauma-infused Palimpsests: Sindh.................................................................................108 Trauma-infused Palimpsests: Sri Lanka..........................................................................118 Cinematic rendering of affect-scapes...............................................................................126 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................132 CHAPTER 3: Death-Making Traumas: Dislocation of Pain in Post-Partition Kashmir.............135 Introduction: A Sensorium of Vulnerability....................................................................135 History, Trauma and Identity in Kashmir........................................................................145 Trauma sensorium in Kashmiri short stories...................................................................156 Trauma sensorium in Agha Shahid Ali............................................................................170 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................194 CHAPTER 4: Post-Partition Traumas: History and Memory in Githa Hariharan.......................196 Introduction: Intercrossed Memories...............................................................................196 Postcolonial Trauma........................................................................................................199 Memory and Affect in In Times of Siege.........................................................................205 Affect and Witnessing in Fugitive Histories...................................................................219 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................239 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................241 viii INTRODUCTION Partition and Affect-Mediated Postcolonial Trauma Studies The Partition of the Indian subcontinent – into India and Pakistan in 1947 – was one of the crucial moments marking the break between the colonial and postcolonial era. My project is invested in exploring the Partition not merely in terms of the events of August 1947, but as an ongoing process that continues to splinter political, cultural, emotional and sexual life-worlds in South Asia. My dissertation seeks to map analytical pathways to locate the Partition and the attendant formations of minoritization and sectarian violence as continuing, unfolding processes that constitute postcolonial nation-building. It examines the far-reaching presence of these formations in current configurations of politics, culture and subjectivity by mobilizing the interdisciplinary