Arts, Faculty of
English Language and Literatures, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Fateha
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
This thesis contributes to the ongoing conversation in postcolonial and subaltern studies by locating a psychoanalytic pathway to decrypt the phantom presence within the locus of postcolonial and postwar psyches and bodies. It traverses the multi-narrative locale(s) of post-independence Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where a chimeric phantom—born from an intricate amalgamation of political, economic, cultural, and colonial forces—has emerged. This thesis examines the representation of subaltern lives in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost to interpret the phantom presence. The narratives of these texts situate the subaltern in a unique position as they represent not only innumerable dead subalterns but also living ones subjected to relentless violence, death, and degradation in the postcolony. My introductory chapter briefly explores the histories of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, outlining how lingering colonial tensions transform these postcolonial states into necropolitical landscapes where subaltern populations are reduced to the status of the living dead. The second chapter explores Bangladesh and Sri Lanka’s triple bind, encompassing colonial, postcolonial, and post-partition constitutional entanglements that shape these postcolonial nations. Its objective is to investigate how the long-term impacts of the civil war and the institutional processes that perpetuate violence have silenced the subaltern. With this intention, it examines the pervasive silence and lack of resistance within the subaltern population to emphasize the complexities of their struggle for justice by delving into the multifaceted dimensions of violence beyond the overt theatre of war, unravelling its insidious manifestations within the spheres of surveillance, dismemberment, and deaths under the grip of state authority. The third chapter shifts from the physical realm to the metapsychological nature of the phantom by exploring the myth engulfing the living and the dead in the postcolony. To examine the ontological efficacy of subaltern myths as vessels of collective trauma and instruments of resistance, it analyzes the literary portrayals of subaltern populations in the selected texts. It further analyzes how the paradigmatic image of the subaltern as superstitious, illiterate, and non-political intensifies their marginalization within the dominant narratives of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
The Secrets of the Postcolonial Subaltern: Psychoanalytic and Postmemory Configuration in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost by Fateha B.A., North South University, 2021 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2024 © Fateha, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: The Secrets of the Postcolonial Subaltern: Psychoanalytic and Postmemory Configuration in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost submitted by Fateha in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Examining Committee: Judith Paltin, Associate Professor, English Language and Literatures, UBC Supervisor Janice Ho, Associate Professor, English Language and Literatures, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract This thesis contributes to the ongoing conversation in postcolonial and subaltern studies by locating a psychoanalytic pathway to decrypt the phantom presence within the locus of postcolonial and postwar psyches and bodies. It traverses the multi-narrative locale(s) of post-independence Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where a chimeric phantom—born from an intricate amalgamation of political, economic, cultural, and colonial forces—has emerged. This thesis examines the representation of subaltern lives in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost to interpret the phantom presence. The narratives of these texts situate the subaltern in a unique position as they represent not only innumerable dead subalterns but also living ones subjected to relentless violence, death, and degradation in the postcolony. My introductory chapter briefly explores the histories of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, outlining how lingering colonial tensions transform these postcolonial states into necropolitical landscapes where subaltern populations are reduced to the status of the living dead. The second chapter explores Bangladesh and Sri Lanka’s triple bind, encompassing colonial, postcolonial, and post-partition constitutional entanglements that shape these postcolonial nations. Its objective is to investigate how the long-term impacts of the civil war and the institutional processes that perpetuate violence have silenced the subaltern. With this intention, it examines the pervasive silence and lack of resistance within the subaltern population to emphasize the complexities of their struggle for justice by delving into the multifaceted dimensions of violence beyond the overt theatre of war, unravelling its insidious manifestations within the spheres of surveillance, dismemberment, and deaths under the grip of state authority. iv The third chapter shifts from the physical realm to the metapsychological nature of the phantom by exploring the myth engulfing the living and the dead in the postcolony. To examine the ontological efficacy of subaltern myths as vessels of collective trauma and instruments of resistance, it analyzes the literary portrayals of subaltern populations in the selected texts. It further analyzes how the paradigmatic image of the subaltern as superstitious, illiterate, and non-political intensifies their marginalization within the dominant narratives of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. v Lay Summary This thesis seeks to locate a phantom presence within the locus of postcolonial and postwar psyches and bodies of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. To achieve this, it critically examines the representations of subaltern lives in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. These texts place the subaltern in a unique position, as they not only represent innumerable dead subalterns but living ones subjected to relentless violence, death, and degradation in the postcolony. This thesis engages psychoanalysis, memory studies, and subaltern studies to accomplish two primary objectives. The first is to examine the roots of pervasive silence and lack of resistance within the subaltern population. The second objective is to explore how subterranean myths serve as vital instruments for the subaltern to express their historical and ongoing repression and resistance. vi Preface This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Fateha. vii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii Lay Summary .....................................................................................................................v Preface ............................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ vii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................1 1.1 Historical Prelude: Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ......................................................... 5 1.2 Representation and Silence: The Subaltern in Discourse ....................................... 10 1.3 Ghosts in the Shell: Phantom and the Postmemory ................................................ 15 Chapter 2: The Haunting of the Postcolonial Psyche: An Analysis of Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost .......................................22 2.1 Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments ........................................................................ 22 2.1.1 Phantom of the Postcolony: Continuum of Transgenerational Haunting ........ 24 2.2 Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost ............................................................................ 31 2.2.1 State Power: Necropolitical Manifestations in the Sri Lankan Landscape of Violence and Death ................................................................................................... 34 2.2.2 Postcolonial Heterotopia: The Psychic Landscape of Pain Under Reconstruction .......................................................................................................... 37 2.2.3 Phantom Formations: The Complexities of Postcolonial Trauma ................... 40 viii Chapter 3: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” : An analysis of the Postcolonial Subaltern………………………………………………………………………………...45 3.1 Subterranean Myths: Shopnoganj, Dhaleshwari, and Naach-Ghor ........................ 47 3.2 “Dig, Dig, Dig”: An analysis of the plurality of Subaltern Living Dead ................ 55 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................61 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................64 ix Acknowledgements I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Judith Paltin for her gracious guidance and confidence in my work. Her wisdom, generosity, and encouragement have been instrumental in every stage of this thesis project. I also extend my gratitude to my second reader, Dr. Janice Ho, for patiently listening to my early reflections, addressing my endless questions, and supporting the project through to completion. My sincere thanks go to Dr. Dina Al-Kassim, whose seminar ignited my interest in psychoanalysis and the figure of the phantom. I am equally thankful to Dr. Sandra Tomc for her critical insights and fascinating discussions on hauntings, phantoms, and ghosts. I must acknowledge my mentor, Dr. Harisur Rahman, for the opportunities to explore subaltern projects in my undergraduate years, shaping my understanding of subaltern reality and resistance. Thank you for inspiring me to aim high in academia and believe in myself. I extend my deep appreciation to Christie MacLeod, my honorary aunt, for sharing my joy and pain from the onset of my journey at UBC. Most of all, I am eternally grateful to my parents, Mohammad Kamal and Khaleda Akter Pasha, for their enduring love, support, and sacrifice. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction In the labyrinthine aftermath of colonial rule, violence and death have been woven into the fabric of daily existence in the postcolonial world. The haunting presence of phantasmal residues of a colonial past marred by civil strife and pervasive aggression are not merely memories but palpable shifts in the psychological landscape of those left to mourn. It manifests in the whispers and silences that punctuate conversations, in the tales of trauma inherited from ancestors tethered to a history of violence, bloodshed, and the exploitation of land and legacy. Amid the geopolitical contours of South Asia, I turn toward Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan postcolonial and postwar bodies bearing the colossal weight of past violence as they navigate terrains riddled with deaths, disappearances, and mass graves. Their lives are reduced to mere statistics at international human rights conferences on the crises in Algeria, Guatemala, or Myanmar. In these conversations, the pronounced absence of subaltern voices transcends a mere demand for inclusion. Their absence should be the impetus for interrogating the pervasive silences that envelop continuing inequities. To the dismay of dominant narratives, the subaltern memorializes the human wrongs in oral histories, myths, and phantoms, which linger in their silences and wait for redress. This thesis locates a psychoanalytic pathway to decrypt the phantom presence within the locus of postcolonial and postwar psyches and bodies. It traverses the multi-narrative locale(s) of post-independence Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where a chimeric phantom—born from an intricate amalgamation of political, economic, cultural, and colonial forces—has emerged. The phantom, being tangible in its effects and elusive in its form, inhabits the encased shells of the psyche and the entombed bodies, extending its presence from the psychic topography to the physical landscape of the postcolony. This thesis examines the 2 representation of subaltern lives in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost to interpret the phantom presence. The narratives of these texts situate the subaltern in a unique position as they represent not only innumerable dead subalterns but also living ones subjected to relentless violence, death, and degradation in the postcolony. “Post-” (with or without its hyphen): Postcolonialism or Post-colonialism?—The singular term “postcolonialism” has engendered metonymic associations, such as postcolonial or postcolony, thereby becoming ubiquitous to the extent that it stands as an emblem for human bodies indelibly altered by colonialism, or indeed, anything that has passed through the colonial milieu. It comprises varied interpretations: some scholars understand the “post” in “postcolonialism” to mean “after-colonialism” or “after-independence” (Ashcroft et al., Postcolonial Studies Reader 2). This perspective aligns with Ania Loomba’s view that “the prefix ‘post’” implies “an ‘aftermath’ in two senses—temporal, as in coming after, and ideological, as in supplanting” (Colonialism/Postcolonialism 12). Postmodern critics like Steven Best and Douglas Kellner argue that the prefix “post” signifies “an active rupture (coupure) with what preceded it” (Postmodern Theory 29). Ashcroft and his colleagues warn against this notion and emphasize the need to avoid oversimplifying the term to mean “after-colonialism” or “after independence” (Key Concepts 187). They define “postcolonialism” as “the political, cultural experiences of societies that were former colonies,” focusing on how deeply it is intertwined with the legacies of colonialism (Key Concepts 186). Furthermore, they argue that postcolonial theorists must fully grasp the implications of such usage by emphasizing that “[a]ll post-colonial societies are still subject in one way or another to overt or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination, and independence has not solved this problem” (Postcolonial Studies Reader 2). 3 This ongoing debate is reflected in the questions raised by scholars like Kwame Anthony Appiah in “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” Arif Dirlik’s inquiry “Who exactly are the postcolonial intellectuals?” and Benita Parry’s apprehension of the risk that theories of colonialist discourse “restricts (eliminates?) the space in which the colonized can be written back into history” (331-2, 39). Anne McClintock’s critique of postcolonial theory exposes a paradox at its core: the concept is “haunted by the very figure of linear development that it sets out to dismantle” (10-11). McClintock interrogates the foundational premises of postcolonial theory, particularly its ambition to subvert the linear, Eurocentric historical narrative, often polarized through binaries like self/other and metropolis/colony (85). She argues that despite its transformative aims, postcolonialism has inadvertently reinstated a simplistic dichotomy: colonial/post-colonial, which fails to capture the complex political realities of post-independence (85). This reductive binary, she suggests, inadequately addresses the distinction between the beneficiaries and the victims of colonialism—the former colonizers and the colonized. She posits that postcolonialism, by depicting history as “frozen,” erroneously suggests that climactic historical events have concluded rather than acknowledging their ongoing formation (85-86). As McClintock identifies, this conceptual stasis allows colonialism to subtly reassert itself, masking the continuities and disruptions inherent in colonial and imperial dynamics. Achille Mbembe defines postcolony as a space of “self-consuming violence” pulsating with a complex interplay of cultural, social, and political dynamics (“Banality” 2-5). He characterizes the heterotopic space of the postcolony as possessing “carnivalesque aesthetics” and a “vibrant excess” of daily life, marked by a distinctive art of improvisation that fosters a unique interaction between institutionalized power 4 and personal agency (“Banality” 2). Within this space, identities constantly shift and evolve, resulting in a dynamic tableau of social and cultural exchange. He argues that the postcolonial state is built upon the remnants of colonial structures, where the mechanisms of control and discipline imposed by colonial powers are supplanted with corporate institutions and political systems that, once established, constitute a “distinctive regime of violence” (Postcolony 102). His theoretical framework positions postcolonial experiences as historical repercussions that continually perpetuate necropolitical power. The metaphor of mitosis is particularly appropriate in this context, characterizing sociopolitical divisions as splitting a cell, with each new entity inheriting identical traces of its colonial past. It leads to the emergence of the postcolonial subject at the crossroads of routine and rebellion, visible predominantly where “the common daily rituals that ratify the commandment’s own institutionalization” overlap with “the subject’s deployment of a talent for play and a sense of fun,” marking them as the quintessential homo ludens (“Banality” 5). These arguments reveal that the corrosive effect of colonization bleeds through contemporary realities, causing postcolonial nations to become active agents of death. It manifests primarily through commandement, an authoritarian decree that establishes necropolitical order and perpetuates itself through displays of grandeur and excess, devoid of any proportion or ethical restraint (Mbembe, Postcolony 28). An analysis of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka’s historical trajectories reveals how colonial legacies created and sustained ethnic, religious, class, and caste distinctions—differences that have been misconstrued as innate rather than constructed. 5 1.1 Historical Prelude: Bangladesh and Sri Lanka The history of Bangladesh, a nation twice conceived—first through religious discord and later through linguistic division—presents a complex tableau of identity and conflict. The partition of India, characterized by catastrophic violence and extensive displacement, has indelibly shaped the geopolitics and the quotidian realities of the region. Despite the substantial impact of these events, partition narratives have been inadequately explored in scholarly work and are significantly underrepresented in state-sponsored memorialization in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Samaddar; Jahanara Kabir; Mookherjee; Dubey). Some exceptions, such as the inauguration of the Partition Museum in Amritsar, the Citizens Archive of Pakistan, and the US-based 1947 Partition Archive, serve as isolated initiatives in a broader landscape devoid of institutional commemoration. The Bangladeshi government made a determined effort to document the Bangladesh Liberation War through the Bangladesher Swadhinota Juddho: Dolilpotro project. This extensive fifteen-volume series, published between 1982 and 1985, openly acknowledges its incompleteness in the foreword, attributing the deficiencies to a lack of available documents and information. This forthright admission reveals the persistent difficulties in compiling a comprehensive historical record, further emphasizing the struggle to reconcile with and articulate the profound legacies of these transformative conflicts. The partition event is often dubbed “double decolonization,” marking it as a period of contestation and redefinition of narratives impacting four hundred million lives and leading to the migration and death of millions by 1948 (Das; Khan; Ferdous). The historiography of Bangladesh can be discerned by examining the intertwined evolution of colonialism, nationalism, and militarism—a trifecta of ideologies that sequentially catalyzed each other’s rise. 6 The inception of Indian nationalism can be traced back to the establishment of the Congress in 1885, with pivotal movements spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi, such as the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920 and the Quit India Movement in 1942. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 stands as a radical moment, marking the first collective defiance against British rule, thereby forging a symbiotic relationship between nationalism and military might, an alliance further solidified by the formation of the Indian National Army by Subhas Chandra Bose in 1943. These movements crystallized the anti-colonial sentiment, culminating in India’s independence in 1947. However, the vestiges of colonial rule have indelibly marked the collective psyche of the population, instigating a permanent state of ambivalence and fragmentation within the community. This legacy fractured Hindu-Muslim unity, which further deepened with the advent of the two-nation theory advocated by the All-India Muslim League, eventually leading to the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The newly constituted nation-state was divided into East and West Pakistan, creating a physical and cultural rift, which gradually led to many conflicts, particularly over language between the Bengali-speaking population of the East and Urdu speakers and loyalists in the West. West Pakistan’s imposition of Urdu as the national language provoked the Bengali Language Movement in East Pakistan, a protest that carved the path to its independence. This linguistic battle set the stage for further political and social upheaval, resulting in the brutal crackdown by West Pakistani forces in Operation Searchlight in March 1971. The operation sought to suppress the burgeoning nationalist movement in East Pakistan through the systematic elimination of the Bengali intellectual and military cadre, precipitating a prolonged and bloody struggle for independence. The culmination of this conflict on 16th December 1971 saw 7 Bangladesh rise as a sovereign state, forged through immense sacrifice—approximately three million lives were lost, over 200,000 women were subjected to sexual violence, and nearly ten million people became refugees in India, with another million displaced internally. In the post-independence period, the use of nationalism as a political tool varied, with the Awami League advocating secular nationalism, which later faced challenges from the militaristic and religious nationalism enforced during the regimes of General Zia Ur Rahman and Lieutenant General Hossain Muhammed Ershad, reflecting a shift towards an Islamic-centric national identity. The colonial legacies in Bangladesh mirror those of Sri Lanka, revealing how the ethnic, religious and linguistic discord devised to sustain colonial power continues to affect the sociopolitical climate of postcolonial South Asia. Sri Lanka’s colonial history, marked by successive governance of Portuguese (1505-1658), Dutch (1658-1796), and British (1796-1948) powers, has shaped the socio-political landscape that propels contemporary ethnic tensions. The advent of British rule, particularly following the conquest of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815, instituted a unified administrative structure across Sri Lanka for the first time, fundamentally altering its political and geographic identity. Scholars such as Elizabeth Nissan, Roderick L. Stirrat, and R. A. L. H. Gunawardena contend that imposing British Victorian racial theories exacerbated the complex inter-ethnic dynamics by introducing rigid racial, religious, and linguistic divisions. This reclassification had profound repercussions, assigning new levels of political and administrative significance to the identities of Tamil and Sinhalese, which were previously more fluid. The scholarly interpretation of ethnic categorizations further complicates this historical narrative by reinforcing and legitimizing the distinctions that lead to further ethnic bifurcation. Stanley J. Tambiah challenges the reductionist narrative of intrinsic ethnic hostility 8 by arguing against the myth of ancient enmity between Tamils and Sinhalese, suggesting that these ethnic labels have historically functioned as “porous sieves” through which various groups have migrated and intermixed (6). This cause led many academic scholars, such as Krishna, Manogaran, Pfaffenberge, Sivanandan, Spencer, and Tambiah, to dismantle the simplistic notion of an age-old conflict, positing instead that the idea of immutable ethnic identities is a construct significantly shaped by colonial historiography and the racialization of Sri Lanka’s diverse population. Ethnic identity emerged as a significant political construct during colonial governance, and its relevance persisted and evolved following independence. This period saw the ascendancy of the majority community’s adherence to an idealized form of Buddhism, accentuated by notions of “racial authenticity” and an indigenous identity described as the “sons of the soil,” who had been marginalized under colonial rule (Tambiah 66). Tambiah states that this historical narrative facilitated the opportunistic positioning of minority groups, including Tamils, Muslims, and Christians—perceived as overly influential during the British era as needing containment within socio-political hierarchies (66-86). This narrative led to the implementation of the “Sinhala-only” policy in 1956, aimed explicitly at curtailing Tamil and Sinhalese educational opportunities. The enactment of the Official Languages Act of 1956, commonly referred to as the “Sinhala Only Act,” and the “Standardization” policy in 1972 distinctly shaped the socio-political landscape in Sri Lanka, adversely impacting the Tamil population. The Sinhala Only Act, implemented by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike designated Sinhala as the official language, effectively marginalizing Tamil, while the “Standardization” policy was implemented to control Tamil university admissions through a district quota system, significantly reducing their 9 educational opportunities. These policies precipitated substantial employment challenges for Tamils, as public sector jobs mandated proficiency in Sinhala, leading to widespread job losses among Tamil public servants. Alongside the working population, the Tamil students faced discriminatory academic standards, requiring them to achieve disproportionately higher marks than their Sinhalese counterparts for university admission. Further entrenching ethnic divisions, discriminatory measures such as the university standardization system and the 1972 constitution, which revoked constitutional minority protections and established Buddhism as the state religion, intensified ethnic tensions (Krishna; Tambiah; Thiranagama). The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E) capitalized on this growing unrest among the Tamils and began to promote separatist ideologies through various manifestos. Sharika Thiranagama delineates two critical and symbolic events driven by pressure from all sides, the Eviction and the Exodus, that marked the escalation of Sri Lanka’s civil conflict. These events constituted the most significant forced displacements in the nation’s history: the 1990 Eviction that expelled 70,000-80,000 Muslims from the North and the 1995 Exodus that saw 450,000-500,000 Tamils flee Jaffna city. The L.T.T.E., following its confrontations with the Indian Peace Keeping Forces during the 1987-1990 conflict, which resulted in the withdrawal of Indian forces, solidified its dominion over Jaffna by 1991. This consolidation of power led to the systematic elimination of political dissenters, perceived collaborators, and their families (Thiranagama 87). From 1983 until 2009, the political turmoil between the Sri Lankan government, insurgents, and L.T.T.E resulted in an estimated number of 60,000 to 100,000 enforced disappearances registered, the second-highest number in the world. The most affected communities of partition, liberation war, and civil wars remain at the 10 periphery, subjected to historiographical exclusion alongside social and political marginalization. These marginalized communities, whom I refer to as the subaltern, pass on a legacy of silence through the transgenerational transmission of trauma, which corresponds to these individuals being unable to take ownership of their narratives. Their inherited memories, often rooted in collective violence and grief, emphasize the complex interplay of history, memory, and identity, complicating the subaltern’s struggle for narrative agency. 1.2 Representation and Silence: The Subaltern in Discourse J.G.A. Pocock’s observation of slaves, barbarians, and women in antiquity reveals that these “others” had histories imposed upon them while being excluded from actively participating in their creation (226). He categorizes these marginal groups into two overlapping categories: those outside the dominant narrative yet remaining subject to scrutiny and those within the narrative but denied full membership (226). Although these distinctions are not clear-cut and contain significant grey areas, they are crucial for understanding the dynamics of historiographical exclusion and marginalization. This historical imposition parallels the experience of the subaltern, who are similarly subjected to a national historiography that excludes them from authorship. I move past the simplistic binary of Self and Other, Master and Slave, to understand the complexities of subalternity. By inverting Pocock’s position, we can better grasp how national historiography has systematically imposed a history upon the subaltern while excluding them from its narrative framework. This inversion presupposes the need to critically analyze and challenge the hegemonic structures that continue to marginalize the subaltern. I analyze the construction of the “subaltern” figure, which perpetuates a cycle of 11 inauthenticity and subversion in the works of influential writers and their model of who and what is subaltern. The peasant-led attack during the subcontinent’s freedom struggle was often dismissed as insignificant, based on the assumption that peasants could not organize themselves. Shahid Amin’s monograph on the 1922 peasant violence in Chauri Chaura challenges these biases, revealing the complexities of such events. Amin’s meticulous analysis of the incident, described by Gyan Prakash as both “local” and “general,” provides a layered explanation that situates the local event within the broader framework of nationalism and historiographical practice. Amin emphasizes the importance of gaps, contradictions, and ambivalences within the nationalist narrative instead of recounting the event to offer a complete historical account or to reclaim the subaltern voice. By strategically using memory, he disrupts and reinstates the historical record, offering a nuanced exploration that transcends conventional nationalist historiography (Prakash 1486). He does not aim to recover the subaltern as an autonomous subject; instead, he examines the tension between nationalism’s claim to support the peasant and the portrayal of subalterns in the Chauri Chaura incident as “criminals,” revealing the subaltern as a recalcitrant presence in discourse—simultaneously within and outside the nation. By navigating these dual positions, he demonstrates that despite its distortion, the subaltern insurgency has indelibly marked the historical discourse, an “invisible design covered over in the palimpsest” (Prakash 1488). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” foregrounds Karl Marx’s use of the German terms, vertreten and darstellen. They are vertreten (represent), representation as “speaking for” as in politics, and darstellen (re-present), which implies representation as “re-presentation,” as in art or philosophy (Spivak 70). Spivak states that 12 translations often confuse or interchange the terms; for instance, when Marx writes: “The small peasant proprietors cannot represent themselves; they must be represented” (71). In other languages, both terms are generally characterized as represented; however, “[t]hese two senses of representation- within state formation and the law, on the one hand, and in subject-prediction, on the other—are related but irreducibly discontinuous” (70). J. Maggio states, “[t]hus the amalgamation of the two notions of representation establishes a silencing of the subaltern. They can never speak because they are both being “stood in for” and “embodied” by others in the dominant discourse” (422). Spivak’s essay resonates when history leaves the subaltern cold, dead, and silent. In a similar tune, Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi,” a Santhal Naxalite rebel woman, is represented as a voice for the subaltern to “speak” only when she has been physically and sexually traumatized in the Senanayak’s camp. She questions: “You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again?” as she pushes Senanayak “with her two mangled breasts, and for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid” (Spivak, “Draupadi” 402). The narrative concludes with Senanayak being unresponsive and immobilized before the unconquerable subaltern body. Ranajit Guha’s “Chandra’s Death” is yet another example where Chandra, a Bagdi woman who belongs to the “lowest in class and caste,” dies after an assisted abortion at the hands of her mother and sister. The multi-volume project titled Bangladesher Swadhinota Juddho: Dolilpotro also contains numerous “half-suppressed” subaltern voices, as seen in the first volume with an engaging two-page deposition of Ila Mitra at the Rajshahi Court in 1950. She was arrested and tortured by the police, who were deployed in heavy numbers to suppress the Nachol peasant revolt led by Matla Sardar. However, the greater voice of the Nachol revolt is 13 not mentioned at all in the ensuing “history” (Samaddar 223-224). There have been several readings of these texts where each subaltern character is described or diagnosed as a medium to essentially “speak” about their situation/oppression/subdued condition by religion/caste/state. The subjects in these subaltern stories are bodies marked by violence, assault, and death. However, such attempts limit the possibilities of self-expression, relegating them to subalternity by subduing their existence. Landry Donna and Gerald Maclean state how Draupadi/Dropdi bears “female subaltern consciousness whose instrumentality is so often seen to be crucial” (229). In following Spivak’s trend, Devi’s “Dropdi” can be interpreted as a “project to retrieve the subaltern consciousness as they attempt to undo a massive historiographic metalepsis and “situate” the effect of the subject as subaltern... as a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” (Landry and Maclean 214). Despite representing subaltern resistance by examining agency while acknowledging their suppression, the subaltern body is left out of the discourse. Spivak clarifies in one of the interviews, “When you say, ‘cannot speak,’ it means that if speaking involves speaking and listening, this possibility of response, responsibility, does not exist in the subaltern sphere” (Spivak, “Interview” 46). She defines the subaltern as those devoid of identity who are unable to represent themselves and are oppressed by the pervasive institution of reproductive heteronormativity, which severely restricts their social mobility. As such, subalterns experience a dual plight: the lack of available choices or alternatives in their circumstances and an inability to seize any possible opportunities (Spivak 46). The subaltern faces a lack of access to hegemonic discourse, which, in simpler terms, is the deprivation of being heard by the dominant group. Vijay Devadas and Brett Nicholls state 14 that the decision of self-suicide taken by Bhuvaneswari as opposed to sati-suicide is writing back to the imperialist discourse. Moreover, her act stemmed from “a lack of access and a familiar vocabulary to translate her subjectivity” (86). We can question that such narratives occupy subaltern discussion space in both senses of the word representation, but how do we explain the conditionality of death or violence upon the subaltern in Guha and Devi’s texts? In Spivak’s analysis, Sati as a subject remains under-analyzed and devoid of any exploration of their intersectionality at the crossroads of gender, culture, and religion. Her commentary on Devi’s text undermines Draupadi/Dropdi’s political agency by focusing on gendered exploitation and epistemic violence instead of instilling meaning in her resistance as a member of the Naxalite movement. Similarly, Guha’s text misdiagnoses Chandra’s death and the condition of the female accomplice as women’s solidarity and resistance against a male-dominated culture. For the past quarter-century, the archetypal figure of the subaltern in the project of a new critical history, originating in South Asia, has been the third-world peasant characterized as superstitious, illiterate, ill-equipped, isolated, and non-political. This paradigmatic image is widespread in scholarly works: Ranajit Guha’s insurgent peasant and Bagdi agricultural labourer, Mahasweta Devi’s tribal peasant women, Shahid Amin’s “Otiyars” from Chauri Chaura, Ajay Skaria’s Bhils, David Hardiman’s Patidars, and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s study of the Calcutta working class all contribute to this representation. The dominant narrative, presumed to hold a hegemonic position, wields the power to exclude, marginalize, silence, and subordinate the subaltern, resulting in a contentious relationship between the dominant narrative and any history that the subaltern might construct. However, this erasure is not restricted to one generation; 15 traumatic events experienced by subaltern bodies are transmitted to their offspring in an encrypted state, taking the shape of a phantom in their psyche. 1.3 Ghosts in the Shell: Phantom and the Postmemory The elusive nature of memory presents a complex challenge: are these recollections a faithful reflection of personal experiences or fragments inherited from preceding generations? Tihamer Bako and Katalin Zana suggest that memories often originate from a legacy of violence, guilt, shame, and mourning, transmitted across successive generations, emphasizing the role of the social environment in trauma processing and hereditary transmission (271). Jeffrey Prager draws on his sociologist and psychoanalyst expertise to analyze how traumatic experiences extend beyond individuals to the “experience of a whole generation,” where “individuals collectively share a similar psychology” (174). It leads to a “lost generation,” wherein the psychological identification with the past of their predecessors overshadows their distinct present and blurs the boundaries between generations, thus depriving offspring of the opportunity to forge distinct identities (174). Karl Mannheim comments on the temporal and spatial dimensions of this process, contending that the dissolution of natural generational distances leads to the distortion or even collapse of time. Often, traumatic time supplants real time by freezing the traumatic moment and blurring the divisions between past, present, and future (175). In her seminal work “Family Frames,” Marianne Hirsch introduces the concept of “postmemory” to illuminate the complex process through which individuals indirectly inherit memories. Postmemory unravels the distinct connection established by the generation succeeding those who directly experienced cultural or collective traumas. Unlike individuals who directly endured 16 trauma and grappled with fragmented and altered recollections, descendants of intergenerational trauma face the challenge of assembling a coherent historical narrative that lies beyond the scope of their direct encounters. They rely on the transmission of myths and stories to build connections, which are rife with inherent gaps and distortions, obstructing a complete grasp of the past (Hirsch 106). This phenomenon is encapsulated as a structure that facilitates the “inter- and trans-generational transmission of traumatic knowledge and experience... It is a consequence of traumatic recall but (unlike post-traumatic stress disorder) at a generational remove” (106). Hirsch raises profound inquiries that probe the boundaries and extent of postmemory, reflecting on whether the influence of postmemory is confined to the intimate sphere of family and embodied experiences or extends to broader horizons, encompassing distant and adoptive witnesses. In extending these queries, she examines whether postmemory encompasses only the victims or if it extends to bystanders and perpetrators within the context of communal and inherited narratives. These reflections position postmemory to serve as a conduit for transcending the conventional demarcation between direct and indirect encounters with trauma. Hirsch develops distinct response patterns based on personal connections to traumatic events where, first, those closely linked, such as the offspring or relatives of survivors, often exhibit familial responses, that is, a concrete, generational postmemory; second, individuals who share a deep affinity with the affected people or circumstances tend to manifest affiliative responses, figurative and symbolic ones housed by the public (114). She challenges the assumption that even direct descendants possess an entirely unmediated engagement and argues that the perceived authenticity of familial memory is not inherently superior to its affiliative counterpart. 17 She suggests that the familial aspect, particularly within the second generation, is already influenced by the very trauma it seeks to convey. Within familial dynamics, communication frequently unfolds through nonverbal and noncognitive channels, with the transfer of memory often materializing as symptoms (112). This intricate family dynamic resides within a collective realm of imagination shaped by public, generational constructs of fantasy and projection. It is also moulded by a shared repository of narratives and visuals that subtly impact the flow of individual and familial recollections. Past traumas and memories profoundly influence the psychic and mnemonic domains of subsequent generations, known as “post-rememberers.” They take on a custodial role, morally charged with preserving and transmitting the historical narratives inherited from previous generations. Hirsch asserts the legitimacy of using “memory” to describe postmemory, emphasizing its emotional resonance, which she argues closely mirrors actual memory in its capacity to evoke a strong affective response (Postmemory 109). This connection is primarily facilitated through imaginative engagement: “[i]t is a question of adopting the traumatic experiences […] of others as experiences one might oneself have had, and of ascribing them into one’s own life story” (Hirsch, Surviving Images 10). Thiranagama, in her works on Sri Lankan civil war memories, warns against narratives that simplify the causality between historical traumas and present conflicts as they risk “canonizing” such interpretations and solidifying memories that may uncritically align with nationalist narratives (87). She states that such simplification can overshadow contradictory individual memories of any event. Her warning calls for a vigilant and critical approach to understanding how collective memories are constructed and the potential implications of their acceptance within broader societal and political narratives. 18 The discourse surrounding whether trauma can be passed on to the next generation who have not experienced the traumatic event is central to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s groundbreaking work, The Shell and the Kernel. Their unorthodox concepts—transgenerational haunting, phantom, and crypt—transformed Freudian psychoanalysis by shifting it from a “metaphorical register” to the nature of “occult sensibility” (Glazier 8). According to Abraham, traumatic histories experienced by parents manifest within their children, suggesting that symptoms may emerge not solely from an individual’s life experiences but also from a parent’s or ancestor’s psychic conflicts, traumas, or secrets (166). This notion extends the metaphor of ghosts to describe these inherited influences as “phantoms,” signifying an external presence within oneself. Abraham states, “The concept of the phantom redraws the boundaries of psychopathology and extends the realm of possibilities for its cure by suggesting the existence within an individual of a collective psychology comprised of several generations so that the analyst must listen for the voices of one generation in the unconscious of another” (166). The term phantom, initially conceived to signify a rupture in the unconscious of the listener resulting from a patient’s concealed secrets, undergoes a series of interpretative shifts to carry the meaning it has today in Abraham and Torok’s studies: The image of the ghost, or “phantom,” meant at first to point out a rift (inflicted upon the listening analyst by some secret of the patient which could not be revealed) that creates a formation in the unconscious of the listener—lent itself to a variety of theoretical elaborations. The analyst…[is]comparable to a child maturing on the psychic nourishment received from his parents. Should the child have parents “with secrets,” parents whose speech is not exactly complementary 19 to their unstated repressions, he will receive from them a gap in the unconscious, an unknown, unrecognized knowledge, a nescience, subjected to a form of “repression” before the fact. (140) Further elaborating on the intricacies of trauma, Abraham and Torok develop the concept of a crypt where unspoken, unaddressed, or concealed secrets are entombed. Jacob Glazier, commenting on the nature of the crypt, states, “If the spatiality of the crypt provided a schema of how secrets are housed within the crypt itself, then the phantom helps provide a mechanism for its strange temporality” (3). The notion of the phantom encapsulates the interpersonal and transgenerational consequences of silence, as unresolved matters of the departed continue unconsciously within their descendants, leading to profound psychic repercussions (167). The haunted subject unwittingly transforms into a repository for their phantom, encapsulating ancestral secrets and traumas because at its core, “[the] symptoms do not spring from the individual’s own life experiences but from someone else’s psychic conflicts, traumas, or secrets” (166, 171-172). Abraham and Torok identify two concepts, introjection and incorporation, to deal with such traumatic hauntings. They characterize introjection as a gradual and life-long process through which individuals—from childhood to adulthood—internalize their drives, feelings, and desires, shaping their subjectivity. They further state that “[i]ntrojecting a desire, a pain, or a situation means channelling them through language into a communion of empty mouths,” emphasizing how it is a psychic instinct and does not require a conscious endeavour to remain effective since it can find its foundation in instinctual responses (128, 13). The emergence of the transgenerational phantom rests upon secrets that disrupt the process of introjection, which is 20 critical to assimilation and integration. When introjection fails, an unsettling void originates in the unconscious, akin to a “gap” waiting to be filled. It is within this gap that the seeds of the transgenerational phantom are sown. An essential distinction arises in its formation: the transgenerational phantom is not merely a consequence of an individual’s struggles with mourning but a manifestation of silence perpetuated across previous generations. They assert that “incorporation is the refusal to introject loss,” providing a foundation for analyzing introjection, which unfolds in three sequential stages (127). First, individuals encounter something foreign, a catalyst for change, whether it embodies positive or negative implications. This leads to the second stage, where individuals internalize this “new” element, moulding themselves to accommodate the impact through modes like play, fantasy, and projection. This incorporation phase becomes a process of making the unfamiliar one’s own (171). The final stage is the emergence of awareness, as individuals gradually comprehend their interaction with the new element, weaving it into the fabric of their emotional existence. This layered process contrasts with the concept of “incorporation” or “preservative repression,” functioning as a rejection of introjecting loss by removing an “unbearable reality and its confinement to an inaccessible region of the psyche” (102). The exploration of Abraham and Torok’s concept of transgenerational haunting leads us to a crucial question: How does this phenomenon affect both perpetrators and victims? To delve deeper into the intricate dynamics between these two roles, we can turn to Gabriele Schwab’s insights, which shed light on the effects of transgenerational haunting on the psyches of perpetrators. Within the realm of psychoanalysis, a unique tool capable of tracing the far-reaching consequences of unconscious experiences, lies the key to confronting the ghosts of a 21 past that exists only through the convoluted pathways of narrative and psychic transmission across generations. Schwab states that the transmission of traumatic historical legacies unfolds on dual fronts: individually, through the unconscious fantasies of parents and grandparents, and collectively, via the cultural unconscious (184). She explains how this mode of transmission takes the form of a psychic haunting, where “both children of victims and children of perpetrators of trauma unwittingly live the ghostly legacies and secrets of their parents and parental generation” (184). She emphasizes the imperative for descendants on both sides of this spectrum to break the silence as emerging from mutual isolation paves the way for dialogue encompassing their unique traumatic histories (188). According to Abraham, such dialogue can unearth “shared or complementary phantoms” (176). Using the theoretical frameworks of the transgenerational haunting of the phantom and postmemory, I analyze the colonial legacies in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to conduct a literary analysis that reveals how the continuing conflicts affecting the subaltern are depicted in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. 22 Chapter 2: The Haunting of the Postcolonial Psyche: An Analysis of Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost 2.1 Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments delves into the psychological aftermath of transgenerational trauma experienced by Iqbal Chaudhary, a descendant of a Zamindar family and the villagers of Shopnoganj, who represent the oppressed peasant class of colonial Bengal. The Mughal dynasty first initiated the Zamindari system, which became deeply ingrained and served as a defining characteristic for the population of Bengal. The Zamindar patriarchs served as tax collectors under the supervision of a Diwan from Diwani, revenue administration. After the fall of the Mughal dynasty, the British East India Company, in 1793, adopted and consolidated it within the Permanent Settlement System. The arrangement allocated 10/11th of the revenue to East India Company and 1/11th to Zamindars. Unlike the Mughal system, which did not grant land ownership rights or the right to evict peasants if they paid rent, the British Zamindari system granted the right to land ownership and to evict peasants, leading to excessive increases in rents, taxes, and bonded labour. This chapter explores how the unresolved secrets of the Zamindari elite, in conjunction with persistent narratives of trauma and violence among the peasants, collide in the postcolony. It further analyzes the deep-seated impact of these legacies on individual agency and societal cohesion in postcolonial Bangladesh through Abraham and Torok’s framework of transgenerational phantom and Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. In the context of Zamindari heritage, addressing historical trauma necessitates revisiting the past, offering a pathway through which the bearers of transgenerational trauma can navigate the lingering traces of their predecessors. This psychological excavation serves as a conduit, 23 providing descendants of transgressors like Iqbal Chaudhary the capacity to engage with the unresolved legacies of their great-grandparents. Through this process, Iqbal gains the agency to deal with the past on his terms, which otherwise would have remained entangled in the echoes of his family’s traumatic history. The concept of transgenerational haunting and the phantom brings to light the opposing mechanisms of introjection and incorporation, each representing different paths to mourning. Introjection, considered the healthy pathway for mourning, involves the assimilation of loss into one’s psyche. In contrast, incorporation indicates a pathological refusal to recognize and accept circumstances that would demand a radical reorganization of one’s mental topography. This refusal creates a psychic division akin to an insurmountable barrier that obstructs the journey toward healing and the resumption of ordinary existence. Hirsch’s postmemory serves as a conduit for transcending the conventional demarcation between direct and indirect encounters with trauma. It helps to unpack the legacy of the violent transgressions of Iqbal’s ancestors and their impact on Iqbal alongside the collective experience of the Shopnoganj peasants. Hirsch’s two modes of transmission are at play here: Iqbal Chaudhary’s struggle with vertically inherited memories reveals the pervasive influence of the transgenerational phantom. Simultaneously, the villagers of Shopnoganj struggle with the psychological impact of horizontally inherited traumas, emphasizing the need to confront and acknowledge the phantoms of the past to develop a sustainable form of speech for reconciliation and recognition. The villagers embody the archetypal subaltern figures, whose identities and perceptions are profoundly shaped by the traumas inherited from their forebears. Hirsch identifies distinct response patterns based on personal connections to traumatic events where, first, those closely 24 linked, such as the offspring or relatives of survivors, often exhibit familial responses, that is, a concrete, generational postmemory, as shown by Iqbal Chaudhary. In contrast, individuals who share a deep affinity with the affected people or circumstances tend to manifest affiliative responses, figurative and symbolic ones housed by the public (114). It is seen among the villagers of Shopnoganj as they collectively memorialize past injustices perpetrated by the Chaudhary family through traditional oral practices. 2.1.1 Phantom of the Postcolony: Continuum of Transgenerational Haunting of the Chaudharies In Seasonal Adjustments, Iqbal Chaudhary—a person of Indian lineage, a former Pakistani, and now a Bangladeshi—navigates a complex web of memories spanning four decades and two distinct nations. This narrative unfolds his journey as he returns to his village in Bangladesh after an eighteen-year-long absence. Accompanied by his young daughter, Nadine, Iqbal seeks refuge in his family home following the dissolution of his marriage. However, a peculiar contrast arises as the family warmly embraces the child while extending a lukewarm reception to Iqbal. His decision to move from Bangladesh to Australia in 1972 was during a critical period, the 1972 liberation war that led to the formation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan. This decision has led his family, former companions, and even Iqbal himself to view him as a self-centred person who abandoned his family and the country at a dire time. Further complicating his relationships, Iqbal’s marriage to a white Catholic Australian alienated him from societal norms, resulting in accusations of betraying both his national identity and religious affiliations. 25 The transformative impact of nearly two decades spent in Australia consumes his contemplation, leading to a disconcerting dissonance between his evolved self and his place of origin. Iqbal refrains from explicitly outlining the motives behind his departure, but his choice to make Australia his new home remains steadfastly transparent. To him, Australia presented “an opportunity to be different” by rejecting British ideals that had entranced his predecessors: “an obsessive ideal with the older Chaudharies” (233). He held a deep-seated aversion toward the British colonizers, expressing his disdain: “I despised the British for humbling us, using us and creating the political mess before they left” (233). However, his chosen sanctuary revealed itself as far from an idyllic haven as it had drawbacks that challenged his sense of belonging. The nonchalant yet ultra-conservative mindset, coupled with persisting racial biases amidst suburban Australian populations, took a toll on his emotional well-being. It was evident in his frequent clashes with his wife’s Catholic acquaintances, including his father-in-law, Keith, a recurring pattern. Despite these substantial trials, he neither regrets his decision to stay in Australia nor entertains the idea of a permanent departure. As the narrative draws towards its resolution, Iqbal briefly contemplates settling in Bangladesh to uphold his ancestral Zamindari lineage. However, he ultimately decides against this action, defying earlier expectations of a revitalized existence. “Choto Babu [Iqbal Chaudhary] is not in this life.”— As Iqbal delves into the silenced stories of the Chaudhary family and their history of Zamindari heritage, he discovers the transgenerational haunting caused by hidden traumas and familial secrets. He has been bridging the gaps about his ancestors and their crimes through stories shared by the villagers, further provoked by his family’s persistent silence on such subjects. He inherits the cryptic trauma of his predecessors, which originated with his great-grandfather. According to Abraham and Torok, 26 “The buried speech of the parent becomes (a) dead (gap), without a burial place, in the child. This unknown phantom resurfaces from the unconscious and leads to phobias, madness, and obsessions. Its effect can persist through several generations and determine the fate of an entire family line” (140). Iqbal’s father refused to speak of past traumatic events, such as his grandfather’s death by drowning in the Dhaleshwari River or the myths surrounding the crimes of his great-grandfather. This haunting legacy forces him to return to his ancestral grounds, where he is confronted by the physical and metaphysical remnants of the Zamindari past, preserved through myths recounted by the villagers. When Iqbal revisits his ancestral home in Shopnoganj and stands on the family burial ground, he is overwhelmed by a sense of disturbance, sensing that “[he] cannot remove the weight of this perturbation, this feeling of frustrated sorrow and pain as if I were somehow on the outside of myself, watching my own slow death” (42). This cryptic effect is further intensified when the caretaker of the graveyard, addressed by his zamindari title, declares, “Choto Babu [Iqbal Chaudhary] is not in this life anymore,” referring to rumours that he died on his way to Australia (290). At this juncture, the simultaneous condition of being dead and alive collides, creating a “gap” in Iqbal’s existence—where the transgenerational phantom of his lineage resides. Despite being in a living body, Iqbal has his existence interrupted, as Iftiqar observes: “As a first-generation migrant, you have sacrificed the right to belong” (117). His return to the callings of the transgenerational haunting has reaffirmed the crypt, which he could only unravel by confronting the phantom presence that co-exists between generations and across time. He ruminates over “the pain of endless journeys” of his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father throughout generations, not only between places but in his psychological grounding in a 27 space where he supposes he belongs (28). As secrets unravelled, Iqbal connected his fractured childhood memories with his present challenges. The memory of his childhood days is essential to the discussion of transgenerational haunting as he begins to connect the “gaps” in his memory with the stories, objects, and myths he encounters that continue to his adulthood and to a middle-aged Iqbal. Since childhood, he could sense within him “an invisible hand [that] has imprisoned time, holding in its palm the idyllic scene of my [his] childhood days” (4). Although the memories come to him slowly, he believes that he “is unfamiliar with the depths it is feebly probing,” aware that there are “doubts” that he must “never express openly because they threaten [his] most fundamental values” (4, 42). His quest is constantly expressed through an ever-evolving identity, an intimate inward sense of self enriched by ambivalences and polarised views, and constantly negotiated through memory. In one of his childhood memories, when Iqbal’s academic performance waned, his mother brought him before the formidable Maulana Azad, who prescribed wearing a “tabeez.” He recalls, “[t]he string held the terror of a noose as it was slipped over my head … a constant reminder that failure of any kind was not permissible in our family. We were the Chaudharies-rich, clever, and industrious. Infallible. Without human weaknesses” (45). Another significant religious incident involves Khuda Baksh’s sermon, which inspired Iqbal to embark on a jihad to “tilt the balance in favour of Islam” by drenching an anthill with kerosene. However, witnessing the ants succumb to flames, he turned to pacifism and potentially cynicism, declaring, “Never again did the prospect of a holy war enthuse me into any form of violent action” (38). These profound experiences and internal conflicts defined Iqbal’s perceptions and choices as an adult, significantly impacting his interactions with his family and Zamindari heritage. 28 He remains impervious to societal expectations, upholding integrity as his paramount virtue, even when it necessitates the sacrifice of diplomacy. This is exemplified in his resolute protection of his daughter, Nadine, from the ritualistic slaughter of cows during Eid-ul-Adha, an event that rekindles memories of his childhood trauma. His sombre demeanour during the subsequent feast and his barely concealed disdain for the practice he condemns as an “unpardonable exhibition of selfish greed” emphasizes the tension between his moral convictions and the social expectation of conformity (136). This tension shows the profound conflict between his unwavering integrity and the demands of diplomacy. His struggle, however, is in finding a sense of purpose in life, akin to the people of Bangladesh on their historic victory over the barbaric army of Pakistan, who harboured “a kin desire to begin anew, a spirit of generosity toward oneself, a renewal of faith in humanity, and a burning energy to create a new social order whose virtues are not merely remote ideals” (261). His consciousness of permanent loss as a migrant gradually separates him from the violent past of Zamindari opulence and power. He considers himself free by shunning the title of Zamindar, which harbours constrictive expectations at the level of personal, social, and professional life. A constant contest between the past of his heritage and present realities led Iqbal to redefine his identity, evoking a deeper introspection and a radical shift in his life. He believed memory to be the only reliable device through which an “untainted national soul” or a personal untainted soul free from the grasp of transgenerational hauntings can be accessed (261). However, he actively engages with and challenges it to re-invent himself by undergoing the three phases of the introjection process. In the first phase, he confronts the diminishing prosperity of his Zamindari ancestry and the trials of a newly independent nation, 29 Bangladesh. The profound impact on his identity, deeply entwined with the decline of Zamindari heritage, catalyzes his transition to the second stage. Here, he acknowledges the dissolution of the Zamindari system and decides to relocate to Australia, a territory uncharted by the Chaudhary family. This decisive move signifies his deliberate detachment from the past, spurred by a desire to escape rather than adapt to the “new” Bangladesh. This complicated situation resonates deeply on a personal level, as his identity is embedded in the Zamindari heritage. It marks the inception of the second phase, wherein Iqbal acknowledges the dissolution of the Zamindari system and decides to relocate to Australia. His pursuit, however, proves unrewarding and daunting, reflecting the absence of a clear rationale guiding his actions and offering insight into his haunted and burdened psyche. Instead of being driven by the quest for discovery, he chose to become a teacher to “numb” himself, as the suburban environment fosters “cerebral inertia” (121). In his view, taking up the role of a teacher is an extended venture in “masochism,” starkly contrasting the privileges of being a Zamindar. He contends that his journey aims to “erase the past and assume a more humane identity” (122). In this phase, he embarks on a divergent, non-linear pathway, where one direction leads to introjection and the other to the incorporation process. This reality encompasses his perceived betrayal of the Bengali cause, his opportunistic abandonment of patriotic duty, his deviance as a Chaudhary who left his family in its hour of need to restore the Zamindari name, and his perceived fragility in upholding his religious convictions. For nearly two decades, he has struggled with the haunting of the transgenerational phantoms and the repercussions of his decisions. When it became unbearable, he returned to Bangladesh to “heal in his spiritual womb,” which signified the commencement of the third 30 phase and the termination of the incorporation process (2). This return to the roots marks a crucial point as he realizes that the truth within the myths of violence and deaths in Shopnoganj are the hidden secrets, which, in their phantom forms, lurk in the crypt. Unveiling the shrouded narratives of traumatic experiences and bringing concealed truths to light emerges as a crucial catalyst in dispelling the lingering ghostly presence that such events cast upon Iqbal’s inner self. Abraham and Torok state that the actual or supposed traumas make introjection impracticable since “the objectal correlative of the loss is buried alive as a full-fledged person” (130). However, Iqbal embarks on a profound transformation where his psychological awakening catalyzes a gradual shedding of the egotism, self-indulgence, and entitlement historically linked to his Zamindar lineage. He strives to reconcile the conflicting aspects of his identity through a newfound understanding of his cultural and familial legacy of committing oppression and violence in Shopnoganj. Abraham and Torok assert that “suffering that is recognized as such by others facilitates its gradual psychic assimilation or introjection” (12). Iqbal’s suffering reveals itself through his interaction with Iftiqar, who, when asked why he did not leave the country to escape the identity that torments him, responds, “I am not resilient enough to take on another identity. I would feel as if I had betrayed myself” (118). This simple exchange enabled him to accept his Australian-Bangladeshi identity and embody the virtues of propriety, self-control, and tolerance. By adopting these attributes, Iqbal releases himself from the hauntings of the past of his great-grandfather’s legacy of debt, thereby completing the process of introjection. Khan’s narrative delves into the personal ramifications of colonial legacies through the transgenerational haunting of the successor of a Zamindari family, the Chaudharies. The haunted 31 legacy of an oppressive colonial feudal system shows how historical trauma impacts individual and collective psyches and continues to shape postcolonial identities. Ondaatje’s narrative progresses from this introspective focus to address the broader, more overt dynamics of state-sanctioned violence during Sri Lanka’s civil war. His narrative reveals how postcolonial states, built upon colonial skeletons, continue to disrupt and reshape communities. Moving forward from the colonial struggles within individual memories to the public turmoil inflicted by governmental actions, I present a comprehensive tableau of the ubiquitous and varied effects of violence on the first generation and their individual experiences, encompassing the beginning of transgenerational haunting that will haunt the collective fate of a nation. My analysis of the second text leads with the question: How can the subaltern speak when a skeleton characterizes their resistance? 2.2 Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost In the Sri Lankan Civil War, which lasted from 1983 until 2009, an estimated number of 60,000 to 100,000 people “disappeared.” These numbers represent human bodies whose living presence is substituted with numbers to be added to the millions of deaths in the colony. Beyond the war and death spectacle, the brutality is embedded in the living bodies surveilled, dismembered, and starved under state control. It is the violence of death that lingers, assuming the shape of the phantom; it does not rest, halt, or stop; instead, it continues to infest the living and the landscape through continuous terror and horror of war violence. Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost takes us to the center of an exploration of the reality behind the “disappeared” human bodies, where we walk alongside the living bodies infested with personal and collective trauma. Anil 32 Tissera, a forensic specialist, and Sarath Diyasena, a local archaeologist, collaborate on investigating four skeletons unearthed in a government-protected graveyard. However, forensic analysis hints at a stark revelation: while three skeletons are dated, one, named “Sailor,” is contemporary. I proceed with Anil’s queries, opening an interrogatory and interstitial space where she questions—Who? What? Where? —to investigate the political killings in the civil war while traversing the pathological pain and trauma in the postcolony. I intend to delve into the multifaceted dimensions of violence beyond the overt theatre of war, unravelling its insidious manifestations within the spheres of surveillance, dismemberment, and deaths under the grip of state authority. I focus on how state-sanctioned violence affects the psyche of people living in postcolonial nations, drawing on the psychoanalytic frameworks of Abraham and Torok, Mbembe’s necropolitics theory, and Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. This section suggests that the long-term impacts of the civil war and the institutional processes that perpetuate violence necessitate a diverse analytical approach that addresses Sri Lanka’s postcolonial position. The narrative of the novel, Anil’s investigation into Sailor’s death, operates as a layered postmortem examination where it symbolically performs an autopsy on both the physical body and the subaltern consciousness, thus attempting to suture the exposed traumas of a postcolonial society. Wendy Knepper termed it “postcolonial postmortem,” implying both a literal investigation necessitated by murder and a metaphorical inquiry into the postcolonial condition, suggesting a retrospective analysis scrutinizing the postcolonial itself as a subject. This framework not only addresses the literal autopsies of individual deceased bodies but also extends to a critical dissection of the societal and aesthetic consciousness of postcolonial subjects. It challenges the binary of the “postcolonial” and the “postmortem”: the former signifies 33 colonialism as a lingering presence, whereas the latter denotes a conclusive end. Such investigations have the potential to inadvertently resurrect the colonial past, which continues to permeate daily life and collective memory, thus haunting the present (Knepper 40-41). The characters are haunted by both collective and personal histories, which not only force them to confront the complexities of grief and loss but also actively affect their behaviours and experiences. These historical traumas drive the characters into a liminal space, suspended between the living and the dead, where the unresolved past profoundly influences their actions. As individuals confront these entrenched traumas, a transformative process begins, enabling them to uncover the hidden truths concealed within the crypt of the postcolonial psyche. Drawing on this context, Knepper analyzes how the intersection of postcolonial dynamics with traditional postmortem procedures serves as a literal and a metaphorical dissection. The physical dissection of a body parallels the figurative dissection of societal wounds, portraying how postcolonial subjects not only live with but also systematically analyze and articulate the causes of their unremitting traumas (57). 34 2.2.1 State Power: Necropolitical Manifestations in the Sri Lankan Landscape of Violence and Death Anil’s Ghost pulsates with fear, and the first reference to this emotion is on the opening page: “There was always the fear, double-edged, that it was their son in the pit, or that it was not their son—which meant there would be further searching” (Ondaatje 5). Ondaatje’s narrative carries this inescapable structure of fear, gradually becoming a suffocating atmospheric pathology. Here, Anil’s fascination with the term “amygdala” gains double relevance in terms of her forensic work and the fear spread in the postcolony. This omnipresent fear effectively reduces the tangible human body to a singular part—the amygdala, which processes fearful and threatening stimuli. Anil’s investigation of Sailor’s death involves pursuing and representing truths through multifaceted retellings, where truth transforms into a matter of perspective, one among numerous re-presentations of events and deaths. Death, within this narrative, is constantly represented, misrepresented, and re-presented, ultimately rendering death a subjective matter. In the Sri Lankan postcolony, death is often substituted with the term “disappearance,” individuals being arrested or abducted, subjected to torture, mutilation, and, almost certainly, death. This linguistic substitution instills fear, transforming violence into what is described as a “national disease” within the backdrop of a “continual emergency” (53, 42). The narrative states that the Sri Lankan state follows a “mad logic.” We see the extent of this madness in the descriptions of resultant causalities: skeletons dug out of a cocoa pit in Matale, the assassination of a government official on a train, the list of disappearances, the murder of Palipana’s brother, the description of a captive being taken to interrogation who was later found dead on the crossbar of 35 his captor’s bicycle; the beheaded schoolboys witnessed by Ananda’s wife, who then disappeared never to return (186, 11, 32, 41, 46, 154, 175). The novel’s center rests on how human bodies and their psyche function under state power and how the state’s necropolitical manifestations impact individuals and their communities. Mbembe found modernity at the origin of multiple concepts of sovereignty and the origin of the biopolitical (“Necropolitics” 13). He bases his concept of necropolitics on Michel Foucault’s ideas of discipline, biopolitics, and biopower, which are crucial to understanding the function behind social institutions and discourses. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault traces the shift from sovereign disposal to modern power administration—a transition from a singular and overt exercise of power to a more discreet yet highly effective form of control and regulation (90). Mbembe extends this analysis, noting that power has changed from the monarch’s right to the “right to take life and let live” to the state’s right to incinerate (10). The modern state’s objective in disciplining social bodies is to ensure continuous production: the shift from public execution to incarceration is designed to maintain the usability of biological bodies for social production (10). It accumulates and scrutinizes even the micro-details of the body to impose a series of hierarchizations and continual modes of surveillance. In the case of war-induced massacres, just like the Sri Lankan civil war, living bodies are reduced to the status of living dead. In the postcolony, the physical form of bodies is rendered inconsequential, perceived as an undifferentiated mass akin to unburied pain compressed within human forms. Sarath aptly observes, “We seem to have too many bodies around” such that the “disappearances” of many seem to be inconsequential (Ondaatje 274). For Anil, this obligation stems from her belief that 36 “permanent truths, the same for Colombo as Troy,” are found in knowable details and that such truths “set you free” (64, 102). As a forensic pathologist, Anil meticulously investigates trace minerals to determine “where” initial and subsequent burials are, examines minute indentations in bones that indicate parasitic activity, and identifies subtle deformities revealing an individual’s occupation. However, her fixation on names transcends her professional duties. She uses names to cement identities, grasp the complexity of situations, and connect disparate events and occurrences. Her obsession with names manifests in various instances: appropriation of “Anil,” a masculine name “bought” from her brother, shouting her married lover’s name, Cullis Wright, in the car, or when she inquires about the name of Sarath’s wife, who committed suicide. Others question this fixation, as Gamini provocatively asks, “What would you do with her name?” (264). Although this question remains unanswered, her obsession is grounded in the belief that every name represents a fact, a “permanent truth” that distinguishes bodies from the “unhistorical dead” (253). Her relentless pursuit of Sailor, as she asks, “Who was he? This representative of all lost voices?” is with the belief that “One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims” (56, 176). However, this pursuit is subverted by the realization that he was “a victim among thousands,” prompting her to reflect, “What would [finding his name] change?” (176). Ultimately, the revelation of Sailor’s name—Ruwan Kumara, a toddy tapper—offers no solace, as it is merely another name among the innumerable dead (269). This parallels Palipana’s account of how there exists an indifference about the pillage of the original twenty-four Bodhisattvas, which were violently excised from walls with axes and saws to be relocated to distant museums, leaving behind red edges that “suggested the wound’s incision” (12). In the 37 same way, indifference envelopes deaths and disappearances orchestrated by the Sri Lankan state that inflicted irrevocable wounds on living dead subaltern bodies. 2.2.2 Postcolonial Heterotopia: The Psychic Landscape of Pain Under Reconstruction Michel Foucault defines heterotopia as an abnormality, and his first principle lies in categorizing heterotopia into two distinct types: “heterotopias of crisis” and “heterotopias of deviation” (25). The first category of heterotopia serves individuals experiencing crises, offering a spatial refuge, while the latter functions as a domain to accommodate deviants (25). The first principle is that every culture constitutes heterotopias, which, according to Foucault, is their “constant” factor (24). In the novel, the base for Anil and Sarath’s archaeological investigation is a converted space formerly a passenger liner, the Oronsay, which sailed between Asia and England. It becomes a heterotopic space addressing the crisis of identifying Sailor’s identity, a deviation from the norm set by the government to discourage activities remotely linked to state violence. The second principle posits that existing heterotopia can function in diverse ways, as each has an assigned function; however, it can adopt different functions based on synchrony with the culture of origin (25). The Oronsay, initially a heterotopia preserving the past, undergoes a functional shift in the immediacy of violence, transforming into another heterotopic space for her forensic examinations. This adaptation aligns with the third principle, asserting that heterotopia can juxtapose incompatible sites (26). Foucault’s fourth principle elaborates on how heterotopias function as heterochronies, places accumulating time contrastingly, some heterotopias are not geared toward eternity but are transitory and temporal (26). Oronsay, at first, as a historical passenger liner, constituted the 38 notion of accumulating time toward eternity. However, when Anil conducted forensic experiments on the skeleton for a brief period, it became a temporal heterotopic place whose function dissolved after completing forensic work. This complements the fifth principle, which states that these spaces have opening and closing that simultaneously isolate but make them penetrable (26). The Oronsay works as a liminal space to host Anil and Sailor’s process of symbolic engagement and identity determinations of Sailor; it has a set opening and closing, which can be penetrated whenever the need arises. In the context of the Sri Lankan civil war, state-sanctioned violence creates a liminal zone where neither life nor death can fully manifest. This systemic imposition of violence prevents identities from adhering to the primordial polarities of life and death, as well as order and chaos, creating a postcolonial environment characterized by perpetual ambiguity. When conventional governance and power structures fail to apply, exacerbated by the dissolution of foundational polarities, individuals in the postcolony are suspended in existential and societal indeterminacy. This rupture demonstrates how political violence can fracture the foundational binaries that traditionally organize human and social reality. Mannheim states that traumatic time supplants real time by freezing the traumatic moment and blurring the divisions between past, present, and future (175). The subaltern bodies are lodged in a liminal space, in the in-between state of grief and trauma that makes them seek [recreation of] a lost history, unable to accept the loss of parents or spouse or lack of sense of security and freedom in their land. The complexities of the religio-ethnic conflict, marked by a relentless sequence of killings and reprisals, defy comprehension where each group lays claim to its version of truth, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. These human bodies 39 burdened with agony and trauma externalize their inner struggles through reconstruction, as exemplified by the actions of Palipana, Gamini, Sarath, Ananda and Anil. Palipana, once celebrated for his archaeological prowess, faces exile when his translation of rock graffiti is deemed fraudulent. Initially motivated by a passion for preserving Buddhist history and a desire to reconstruct the “unviewable,” he gradually loses his ability to distinguish between reality and imagination, crossing a threshold into a realm beyond tangible reality. This impulse for reconstruction deepens in his nurturing of Lakma, his niece who was traumatized by the murder of her parents and has regressed to an infantile state (103-104). Retreating to the Grove of Ascetics, a forested sanctuary reminiscent of the biblical Garden of Eden, Palipana and Lakma engage in a form of reconstruction of a safe abode to shelter their trauma-stricken bodies. Similarly compelled to reconstruct is Ananda, who, following his wife’s disappearance, turns to alcohol. His artistic expression materializes in recreating Sailor’s face, unveiling the trauma within as he sculpts “a peacefulness he would have wanted for any victim” (Ondaatje 187). Another example is Gamini, who is traumatized working with wounded and mutilated bodies, both exhausting his sanity and the hospital’s emergency services. His trauma, exacerbated by the collapse of his marriage and the suicide of his lover, who was Sarath’s wife, leads him to help others on the verge of death, which he could not extend to his lover. The violence infesting the casualties of war echoes the violence of her death, perpetuating a cyclic manifestation of his trauma. Sarath, on the other hand, faced not only his wife’s infidelity and her subsequent suicide but also the betrayal of his brother, Gamini, who became another victim of the madness in the postcolony. Traumatized by her violent death and of countless others, Sarath ultimately sacrifices himself in the pursuit of retributive justice for Sailor, symbolizing a 40 form of personal and collective reconstruction. Despite lacking a personal connection, Anil is driven by a sense of justice as a forensic pathologist for Sailor and even more for the living dead of the postcolony. Her commitment to reconstructing Sailor’s identity serves to unearth the postcolonial crypt where the phantoms of violence invoked by trauma have transformed individuals such as Palipana, Lakma, Ananda, Gamini and innumerable others into the living dead. Each character innately confronts a compulsion to reconstruct their trauma, a drive stemming from an inability to seek justice for the deaths and disappearances and to uphold dignity for both the living and the dead. Through this reconstruction of their trauma, they seek to exert some degree of control over the events that have transpired in their lives in the postcolony under continuous surveillance and silence. 2.2.3 Phantom Formations: The Complexities of Postcolonial Trauma Abraham and Torok state that across various cultures, a tendency to repress traumatic histories exists, resulting in traumatic amnesia ingrained as a cultural norm (167). Sigmund Freud’s contributions to trauma theory explain that while trauma can be repressed, it invariably continues by influencing behaviour and psyche at an unconscious level. In his concept of “the return of the repressed,” Freud explains how repressed elements resurface in various symptomatic forms, disrupting the present. Abraham and Torok extend this analysis to the transgenerational transmission of trauma, calling it the “return of the repressed or the return of the phantom,” and recognize that trauma can never be silenced entirely, as its effects continue to operate at an unconscious level (177). Abraham suggests that attempts to silence traumatic events inadvertently lead to their unconscious transmission, culminating in a haunting that spans 41 generations. They advocate for a psychoanalytic approach akin to a “cult of ancestors,” fostering peace for the deceased and liberation from phantom hauntings for the living (167). Such liberation from ancestral hauntings necessitates directly confronting and revisiting past traumas termed “mourning” and recognizing the psychic presence of ancestors within one’s psyche, uncovering their unspoken suffering and concealed histories, along with their guilt, shame, and transgressions. Unlike the crypt that entombs the loss of an object of love within the individual, the transmission of transgenerational, interpersonal, and cultural trauma depends not on what is lost to us but on how we are affected by what is lost to others. On a narrative level, the phantom emerges from the trauma of deaths that operate at both personal and collective levels: Sailor’s death plagues Anil, Lakma is scarred by the death of her parents, Palipana by the loss of his brothers, Sarath by his wife’s death, Gamini by the death of his lover, Ananda by Sirissa’s disappearance, and Sarath’s death further marks both Gamini and Anil. The phantom is transmitted from one unconscious to another, ventriloquizing the loss felt by others and staging its presence in “words” (Abraham and Torok 176), as seen in Anil’s conviction: “One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims” (Ondaatje 176). In the text, the phantom materializes as a skeleton—the literal skeletal remains of Sailor (Ruwan Kumara)—embodying the mute subaltern figure. Anil ventriloquizes the dead subaltern, Sailor, and “stages” its presence through forensic detailing and studying its anatomy in “words.” The words the phantom uses to carry out its return are termed “phantomogenic words”; effectively, these words do not refer to a source of speech in the parent but point to the “gap” and refer to the unspeakable (Abraham and Torok 171-173). The phantom words hint at the presence of the “gaps left within us by the secrets of others,” which “place[s] the effects of the phantom in 42 the social realm” (176). In contrast to the melancholic subject, who conceals and encrypts their wounds stemming from the loss of a perpetually cherished figure, the haunted subject unwittingly transforms into a repository for their phantom, encapsulating ancestral secrets and traumas (171-172). At its core, “[the] symptoms do not spring from the individual’s own life experiences but from someone else’s psychic conflicts, traumas, or secrets” (166). The phantom residing within the subaltern bodies inadvertently exteriorizes the unspeakable secrets in the postcolony. Sarath and Palipana exteriorize their trauma by collapsing the distinction between the ancient past and present. They embark on projects to reconstruct and reimagine historical realities as a substitution for their desire to reconstruct their unspeakable secrets before the world. It is exemplified in Palipana’s fraudulent translation of rock graffiti and Sarath’s aspiration to reconstruct a “city in the south of the island that no longer existed” (29, 279). Anil, in contrast, is enveloped in a pervasive sense of collective guilt, as seen through her reliance on familiar literary sources. She draws comfort from resonant lines in “The Man in the Iron Mask,” reflecting on how one is perceived as a criminal by mere awareness of crimes: “We are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes but because we know that crimes have been committed” (54). This reflection mirrors her inner torment, as she is haunted by the phantoms of culpability throughout her work—from her forensic investigations in Guatemala to her humanitarian efforts in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, by sculpting Sirissa’s face onto Sailor’s skull, Ananda meditates on their shared fate of death, representing a counteraction to silencing by the state power. His act of personalization not only restores individuality to an otherwise anonymized victim but also represents a broader attempt to voice the personal tragedies submerged under the dominant war narratives. 43 In the novel, all the characters, except Anil, are involved in the process of preservative repression while dealing with their trauma through the process of recreation. The traumatic hauntings can be interpreted through Abraham and Torok’s concepts of introjection and incorporation. Introjection is a foremost psychic instinct and does not require a conscious endeavour to remain effective since it can find its foundation in instinctual responses (13). It contrasts with the concept of “incorporation” or “preservative repression,” which is defined as the “removal of an unbearable reality and its confinement to an inaccessible region of the psyche” (102). To differentiate, “incorporation denotes a fantasy, introjection a process,” signifying that incorporation functions as a rejection of introjecting loss (125). Anil strives to gain closure through juridical redress that follows the disclosure of violent acts. In her reconciliation of loss through a Freudian lens, she acknowledges proper mourning, wherein the lost object is acknowledged as deceased. Here, death takes on a dual significance: the actual demise of Sailor and the metaphorical demise of justice, providing the ego with a moral rationale to transcend this loss. Whereas Ananda, Sarath, Gamini, Lakma, and Palipana make dwelling in loss, signalled by the melancholic’s refusal to move past trauma, the ethical impulse of the narrative. The “inexpressible mourning” of the melancholic results from “a secret tomb inside the subject” that keeps the lost object “buried alive in the crypt” as a form of psychic incorporation (Abraham and Torok 130). It is only when “(f)aced with the danger of seeing the crypt crumble…[that] the ego begins the public display of the interminable process of mourning,” which is melancholia (136). A prime illustration is seen in Palipana’s influential translation of rock graffiti, which appeared to be an “improvable truth” to him and not “like forgery or 44 falsification” (Ondaatje 83). He represents the truth beyond the sterile linear translation that would open the phantom presence of a rich history that otherwise would remain untranslated. There seems to be a contagious muteness in these narratives, moving across disparate characters who live, die and crawl through trauma, violence, and loss. We encounter Mbembe’s existential queries on the boundaries between life and death in exploring the historical trauma in Seasonal Adjustments and the harrowing narratives of disappearance in Sri Lanka, as depicted in Anil’s Ghost. These queries traverse from the visceral imprints of colonial legacies to the spectral presences, probing the identities of those between life and death—the living dead, the subaltern. The forthcoming chapter engages diverse theoretical perspectives to analyze how subaltern myths serve as vital instruments for the subaltern to express their historical and ongoing repression and resistance. Before I begin, my question to those engaging with postcolonial subaltern is: Who made the subaltern subject to the conditionality of death, and what made death the conditionality for them to speak? 45 Chapter 3: “Can the Subaltern Speak?”: An Analysis of Postcolonial Subaltern I begin this chapter by invoking Mbembe’s haunting question: “How is it possible to live while going to death while being somehow already dead? And how can one live in death, be already dead, while being there—while having not necessarily left the world or being part of the spectre” (Mbembe Postcolony 201-202). This inquiry resonates with my conceptualization of the postcolonial subaltern subject as the phantom, a dead yet living presence in the crypt, to analyze the representation of subaltern bodies in the novels Anil’s Ghost and Seasonal Adjustments. This chapter will explore the literary portrayal of subaltern populations as superstitious, illiterate, and non-political and how such representation intensifies their marginalization within the dominant narratives of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Despite such characterization, subaltern speech and resistance persist in various forms, with myths playing a crucial role in their cultural narratives. I contend that myths, particularly those involving phantoms, serve as vital instruments for the subaltern to express their historical and ongoing repression and resistance. As myths encapsulate universal themes of life, death, and moral conflict, they become a powerful subterranean language to voice injustices in the context of dominant historical discourses and their ongoing struggles. In my contention that subaltern figures resist subalternity through myths, I intend to connect to the foundational ideas of subaltern studies, which criticize how dominant groups have historically repressed, marginalized and distorted subaltern voices. Subaltern studies, as an interdisciplinary approach, operate within hybrid spaces of practice and negotiation. Ranajit Guha initiated it amid the Indian state’s crisis in the 1970s to critique established historical narratives in South Asian scholarship, thereby reshaping the discourse around subalternity. The term “subaltern,” derived from Antonio Gramsci, signifies 46 subordination across class, caste, gender, race, language, and culture, emphasizing the dominant-subordinate relationships in history. While acknowledging the influence of the dominant groups, Guha sought to “rectify the elitist bias characteristic of much research and academic work” in South Asian discourse (Subaltern Studies I vii). He contends that subalterns acted independently of the elite, forming an autonomous political domain that neither originated from nor relied on elite politics (Small Voice 3-4). This rectification is based on the conviction that elites exercised dominance, not hegemony, over subaltern groups. The nation-state, forged through compromise and coercion during the nationalist struggle against British rule, faced instability as its capitalist modernity agenda intensified social and political inequalities. Gyan Prakash states that when the state’s legitimacy was challenged, it increasingly relied on repression to maintain control. As repression proved insufficient, the state combined coercive measures with patronage, financial incentives, and populist rhetoric to reinforce its legitimacy. These strategies, particularly under Indira Gandhi’s government, secured dominance but eroded institutional authority, compromising their legitimacy in representing the masses (1476). The state’s failure to authentically represent the masses revealed the need for a historiographical approach that addresses the marginalized voices and experiences overlooked by the dominant narrative. Subaltern studies thus emerge as a critical response to the hegemonic structures perpetuating exclusion and inequality in South Asian historiography. Guha states that “[h]istoriography has been content to deal with the peasant rebel merely as an empirical person or member of a class” but “not as an entity whose will and reason constituted the praxis called rebellion” (Small Voice 2). Subaltern history comprehends the lives and struggles of the marginalized and oppressed; however, the condition of subalternity characterized by 47 wretchedness and humiliation can also pertain to individuals and groups who are not visibly impoverished or downtrodden and even to those who might be identified as subaltern elites. This perspective necessitates a broader understanding of subalternity encompassing economic deprivation and other forms of social and political marginalization. As the subaltern impetus grew, Gyanendra Pandey contemplates the new challenges and ever-widening horizon of what constitutes subalternity. Pandey observes that for over two centuries, the struggles of the oppressed and subordinated have been framed as quests for recognition as equals (4740). This historical narrative has emphasized the pursuit of sameness and equal rights: “one man, one vote,” equal pay for equal work, the dismantling of entrenched power structures, and the acquisition of state power (4740). However, he critiques this perspective by emphasizing a significant shift in the latter part of the 20th century. The subaltern struggle evolved to encompass a self-conscious demand for the recognition of difference since it became evident that differences in gender, communal practices, ways of being, and even incommensurable languages and beliefs are integral to the richness and diversity of human experience (4742). Pandey questions this shift: “How is the long-standing struggle for equality supposed to be reconciled with this newly asserted right to the recognition of difference?” (4736). To further explore the evolving complexities of subalternity, I shift my focus to subaltern myths that encode collective trauma and act as instruments of resistance. 3.1 Subterranean Myths: Shopnoganj, Dhaleshwari, and Naach-Ghor In this section, I aim to analyze the ontological efficacy of subaltern myths as repositories of collective trauma and instruments of resistance. Often perceived as conventional ghost stories, 48 but far from being mere relics of superstitions, these myths warrant examination through the lens of transgenerational trauma, phantom, and postmemory theories. Abraham stated that “[t]he phantoms of folklore merely objectify a metaphor active in the unconscious: the burial of an unspeakable fact within the love-object” (172). He draws from the realm of ghost stories and folklore, noting that individuals who experienced unnatural deaths, were involved in crimes, or suffered grave injustices and have been denied proper burial returns to haunt the living (167). In contrast to conventional ghost stories where spirits return to unveil concealed truths, the phantom assumes a deceptive role, misleading the affected individual and safeguarding its enigmatic nature. The phantoms are reimagined from this perspective, not as the spirits of the departed but as the gaps left behind by others’ concealed secrets. This unique insight casts ghost stories as fictional conduits for conveying the encrypted, unspeakable secrets of past generations; this form of haunting is the lingering aftermath of unresolved trauma. Carla J. Castricano raises a fundamental question about the coexistence of the deceased within oneself, asking, “But how can the dead live inside me?” “Where would they find ‘lodging’?” (56). Abraham and Torok address these inquiries through the framework of the crypt by designating it as a distinct intrapsychic topography where unutterable mourning takes form within the individual. Whether considering the villagers of Shopnoganj or Iqbal Chaudhary, the crypt symbolizes a concealed tomb that houses the “idealized dead other” as a living presence (Castricano 56). The concept of postmemory states that past traumas and memories profoundly influence the psychic and mnemonic domains of subsequent generations, known as post-rememberers. They take on a custodial role, morally charged with preserving and transmitting the historical narratives inherited from previous generations. 49 In the historiography of South Asia, the Zamindari system, exemplified by the Chaudhary family in Seasonal Adjustments, carried a “proud legacy of a Moghul title bestowed upon chosen warriors” whose dominion is shrouded in a veneer of “self-sacrifice and altruism” (9, 158). However, this portrayal contrasts sharply with the reality embodied by figures such as Iqbal’s great-grandfather, Istiaq Ahmed Chaudhary, whose actions are retrospectively deemed “criminal” (6). The fragmented narratives recounted by the elders of Shopnoganj provide a vivid oral history that pierces through the “Zamindari opulence and cruel excesses” (6). Their worldview, deeply rooted in feudal hierarchies, relegated peasants to mere cogs in the Zamindari machine, epitomized by the belief that “a farmer’s existence can only be justified by the menial work he does for the Chaudharies” (14). The Zamindari system established in the Mughal dynasty to collect land revenue under the revenue administration continued for decades in Bengal until the independence from British rule. With changes in rulers, the system began to yield greater power and autonomy, leading to the oppression and dehumanization of peasants. Mbembe, analyzing such transformation from the colonial to postcolonial period, states that the “agents” of the commandement usurp the law for personal gains by perpetrating heinous acts of violence (Postcolony 28). Moreover, such violence was carried out in “miniaturization,” where small acts of violence “tended to erupt at any time, on whatever pretext and anywhere… in the form of micro-actions which, becoming ever smaller, were the source of a host of petty fears” (Postcolony 28-29). Iqbal comments on such violence and dehumanization by stating, “We are the saviours, the magnanimous agents of rescue for those in trouble... We enjoyed the power of life and death over the villagers without ever feeling vulnerable or apprehensive about the forces which might control us,” emphasizing the perceived divine authority that the Zamindars wielded 50 over their subjects (223). This illusion of omnipotence persisted even after the Zamindari system’s dissolution, with former Zamindars retaining their privileges and evading accountability for their historical oppressions. The severe trauma inflicted by the Zamindars catalyzed the emergence of phantasmal narratives within the peasant communities, narratives that blur the boundaries between the tangible and the imagined. The past of Zamindari’s cruelty against the villagers resurfaces through Iqbal’s recollections, centred around the charred brick wall once part of the Naach-Ghor. The ruin was a dance house, a secluded enclave catering to the leisure and amusement of the Chaudhary patriarch, Ishtiaq Ahmed Chaudhary. In here, Iqbal confronts the “visible reminders of my ancestral misdeeds,” branding his great-grandfather a “scoundrel” who spent his days seeking young peasant girls to train as dancers for his nocturnal festivities (5, 20). Yet Mateen, a staunch advocate of Zamindari prestige, revises these stories, asserting that “in the old days the Zamindars were fun-loving people... a little harmless fun in the dance house. Sometimes they went a little too far, and the villagers heard about a few incidents” (20). One such “incident” was when a Brahmin temple priest’s daughter was randomly picked up from a paddy field by his great-grandfather for his “entertainment.” Several days later, the corpse of the girl was found floating in the river. The priest cursed the great-grandfather and his descendants: “The Chaudharies would never know happiness again. Never find peace” (20). Later that night, he poured ghee around the dance house and set it on fire, followed by his suicide hanging from the jackfruit tree near the ruin. This event did not just scar the physical landscape but also the collective psyche, leading to the genesis of myths entwined with this history of violence. One 51 such myth accounts detailing the gruesome demise of three Hindu men who trespassed past the cursed wall of the dance house: Reckless villagers, stuporous on thari, plotted to chop a jackfruit tree for firewood. Three Hindus, armed with axes, crept past the wall at the stroke of midnight. One had his toes severed and bit off his tongue in pain. He was found in a semi-conscious state the next morning, never to speak again. Gangrene set in. Death was painful. Another man was found dead under a tree, his head split open by a fearful blow deemed to be beyond the power of an ordinary mortal. The third? His body was never found. Swallowed up by the river, people concluded and went about their business” (Khan 12). These men, according to the villagers, were ostensibly claimed by the spirits bound to the dance house, akin to the ghosts in stories of individuals cast into the river with weights tethered to their legs and the priest’s curses; these narratives themselves become a cipher for encoding traumatic memories. The profound trauma of the villagers gave rise to a realm of phantasmal narratives, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. In constructing this traumatic topography, a “whole world of unconscious fantasy” emerged, which was no longer shrouded in secrecy but revealed itself through metaphorical tales shared within the community. Each story, laden with explicable deaths and crude violence, metamorphoses into myth, serving as a sombre reminder of past atrocities. The cracking open of the skull, the dismemberment of bodies by severing toes and tongues, the desecration of the dead, and the disappearances are all manifestations of necropolitical governance, where violence begets further violence. The post-rememberers of 52 Shopnoganj took on a custodial role, morally charged with preserving and transmitting the historical narratives inherited from previous generations. Their inherited trauma, while pervasive and profound, is often left unspoken, manifesting subtly in their transformation into “sepulchral figures” engaged in “nocturnal mourning” (6). When these stories become too perilous to recount and demands for justice remain unmet, as exemplified by the priest who immolated himself to avenge his daughter’s murder, the subaltern figures resort to cryptic myths. The physical and metaphorical elements within these myths—such as the charred dance house wall, the Dhaleswari River, and the jackfruit orchard—transcend their mere physicality to become potent symbols encoding the collective memories of trauma and suffering. Narratives involving villagers being cast into the river with weights or the supernatural occurrences around the dance house illustrate how these myths serve both to encode and preserve the memories of violence and oppression, offering a medium for the subaltern communities to articulate their suffering and resilience in the face of systemic disregard. As the narrative shifts to the post-liberation urban context, the subalterns face a continuity of challenges—poverty, disease, systemic neglect—revealing the disconnect between the elite’s perceived benevolence and the harsh realities confronting the marginalized. Iqbal’s depiction of Yasmin’s plight vividly shows these systemic barriers: “Her name is Yasmin. She stinks of sweat and urine... The baby has almost certainly made her unacceptable to the pimps in the city,” emphasizing the entrenchment of poverty and the profound disjunction between the privileged and the marginalized (156). Moreover, the post-liberation promises of prosperity have largely failed to materialize for the subalterns, their sacrifices during the liberation war eclipsed by the self-serving narratives of the elite. Iqbal discloses one such history of the opportunism of the upper-caste elites, who exploited 53 the circumstances for personal gain: “There were some [upper-caste elites] in the Mukhti Bahini... They turned up in Dhaka for the victory celebrations with heroic tales... They demanded the death penalty for collaborators and repatriation for the Biharis,” describing how the elite manipulated narratives for their benefit while sidelining the genuine contributions of the subaltern bodies (118). While the villagers directly affected by the cruelties have long since departed, the trauma persists in the form of postmemory, extending its reach to the lives of distant and adoptive witnesses. It subsequently engenders a shift from a literal second-generation perspective to a metaphorical one in succeeding generations. Hirsch’s identification of the affiliative response pattern, where trauma is transmitted horizontally, is seen amidst the villagers. The villagers of Shopnoganj partake in the affiliative transmission of trauma from their predecessors. Abraham and Torok’s words encapsulate this phenomenon: In these special cases, the impossibility of introjection is so profound that even our refusal to mourn is prohibited from being given a language, that we are debarred from providing any indication whatsoever that we are inconsolable. Without the escape route of somehow conveying our refusal to mourn, we are reduced to a radical denial of the loss, to pretending that we had absolutely nothing to lose. There can be no thought of speaking to someone else about our grief under these circumstances. The words that cannot be uttered, the scenes that cannot be recalled, the tears that cannot be shed—everything will be swallowed along with the trauma that led to the loss. Swallowed and preserved. (130) 54 In the shadow of Zamindari oppression, the inability of the villagers to engage in introspection is palpable, deeply rooted in a legacy of servility. As Iqbal reflects, their silence about the village patriarch’s tyranny indicates an ingrained loyalty: “Mind you, the villagers would never dare use such a word to condemn him. To malign the legendary village patriarch would be an unforgivable act of disloyalty” (6). This entrenched fear manifests not through confrontation but through narratives of phantomic vengeance, where trauma is symbolically narrated through ghost stories. The phantoms in these tales embody the deferred rage of the villagers, hinting at a collective yearning, not for revenge but for recognition and validation through their enduring “service” to the Chaudhary. It manifests through subservient praise, as seen in their consideration of Iqbal’s association with the esteemed “shahebs and memshahebs,” a term denoting respect for Europeans during the Bengal Presidency, as a “laudable achievement” (10). The villagers take a quarterly pilgrimage to visit the living patriarch, Iqbal’s father, in the city. The Chaudhary family view it as an exploitative act where the delegation of the villagers, embodying all forms of misfortune, invokes his “patriarchal obligations and the generosity of his predecessors” (Khan 224). The villagers are diminished to a state of infancy; their hunger is misconstrued as greed as they voraciously devour food before poverty snatches away the plates. There is a haunting absence of voices that could question the atrocities that have been carried out for decades under the pretext of ruling the mindless, ignorant villagers. Their tales of hardship are dismissed as ploys to extract funds from the living Chaudhary patriarch. Such instances distance Iqbal from the villagers, as he embodies traits reminiscent of his predecessors, characterizing common people as lecherous, greedy, and weak-willed, relegated to the role of beasts of burden rather than dignified beings with inherent rights. 55 3.2 ‘Dig, Dig, Dig’: An analysis of the plurality of Subaltern Living Dead The enduring impact of past traumas and memories profoundly influences the psychic and mnemonic domains of subsequent generations, known as post-rememberers. Thiranagama’s work explores the narratives of these individuals, from private homes to refugee camps, some sharing their experiences in whispers, others in thundering voices. These post-rememberers assume a custodial role, preserving and conveying the historical narratives from previous generations. Referred to as the living dead within a necropolitical landscape, they discuss displacement and their collective remembrance of their lost “natal village”—a sacred concept highly revered among Sri Lankans. Such remembrance transforms histories into myths that sustain their cultural identities and connections to their homeland, especially crucial when systematic state violence and displacement preclude any possibility of return. They strive to gather their personal stories into a collective narrative, fostering collaboration and affirming a shared truth where “[t]hey want their private story to become a public story of collective experience” (Thiranagama 72). The subalterns are systematically silenced, as stated by one of the displaced subalterns in Thiranagama’s text, “[t]here were indeed high-profile atrocities, such as the Krishanthy Kumaraswamy case where a schoolgirl was raped and killed by army soldiers, and the members of her family who went searching for her were also killed” (70). Echoing such desire, Ondaatje depicts Anil’s investigation into Sailor’s death as an effort to expose the broader realities of political violence in Sri Lanka, linking isolated incidents to a collective historical trauma. It consists of numerous such instances where silence prevails due to a pervasive “climate of uncertainty” where “[i]f a father protested a son’s death, it was feared another family member 56 would be killed. If people you knew disappeared, there was a chance they might stay alive if you did not cause trouble. This was the scarring psychosis in the country” (Ondaatje 78). The phenomenon is not isolated to an individual; instead, it permeates the experiences of every subaltern character in the text. While their trauma is personal, each death is linked to the social trauma of the civil war, as all these losses stem from the violence that consumed the subalterns. In a defining moment, Anil uses headphones to awaken Sarath, who, startled by the ensuing voices, reels as if ensnared in an inescapable auditory maze, “as if [he was] unable to escape” (Ondaatje 241). The Walkman played Tom Waits’ rendition of “Dig, Dig, Dig” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs directly into Sarath’s consciousness, “channelling itself into his inner brain” and leading him to misconstrue these sounds as the “voices of the dead” (Ondaatje 241). This auditory misperception suggests that spectral voices, embedded deep within his psyche, impelled him to “dig” the truth. The notion of “channelling” is significant as it represents a common yet rarely questioned method of portraying the subaltern. It foreshadows how Sarath’s recorded instructions, issued just before his death, will navigate Anil to safety. In the end, Anil receives Sailor’s skeleton alongside the final message of Sarath recorded on a tape: I’m in the tunnel of the Armoury building. I have just a moment. As you can tell, this is not any skeleton but Sailor. It’s your twentieth-century evidence, five years old in death. Erase this tape. Erase my words here. Complete the report and be ready to leave at five tomorrow morning. There’s a seven o’clock plane. Someone will drive you to the airport. I would like it to be me but it will probably be Gunesena. Do not leave the lab or call me. (Ondaatje 284) 57 This message whispered from the chest cavity of the returned skeleton of Sailor—confiscated by government authorities—symbolizes both Sarath and Sailor speaking from a unified subaltern identity. In this spectral anomaly, Sailor articulates his death through Sarath’s voice, a haunting manifestation that emphasizes the status of the living dead in the Sri Lankan postcolony. This pervasive dread, conveyed through whispers, emphasizes that even in death, the truth is not spoken aloud, and the fear instilled by the state continues to silence even the dead subaltern. In both texts, the subalterns do not speak directly of the injustices committed by the elites, as presented by Ranjit Guha, leaving the others as non-elite subalterns. The subalterns of Shopnoganj speak through the creation of myths with truth encoded in them—facts that mould into ghosts and apparitions to act as cautionary tales. Whereas the subaltern Sri Lankan bodies do not speak at all, as seen in the absence of myths based on the deaths caused by state-sanctioned violence. There is no myth about what happened to Ananda’s wife, Sirissa, except that she “disappeared” and was never found again. Ondaatje writes, “Death, loss, was ‘unfinished,’ so you could not walk through it. There had been years of night visitations, kidnappings or murders in broad daylight. The only chance was that the creatures who fought would consume themselves. All that was left of law was a belief in an eventual revenge towards those who had power” (Ondaatje 78). However, the villagers of Shopnoganj had seen such “disappearance” cases, where the dead bodies would later be found floating in one of the rivers, like the corpse of the little girl who was abducted by Iqbal’s great-grandfather or never to be found like Sirissa. They, too, had disappearances that would never be buried or grieved and, if found in a mass grave, would be unrecognizable and, due to governmental restrictions and incompetencies, would not be identified or ever given justice. All these consecutively keep the population under 58 constant fear of death and violence where silence is wielded to keep the population in control. Francisco Ferrandiz and Antonius C. G. M. Robben explore the strategic use of mass graves by regimes as instruments of terror and control. They examined how these graves disrupt societal and personal functions by causing social and physical entropy and serve critical roles in thwarting collective memorialization and resistance. They argue that such burials assert “authoritarian sovereignty,” concealing atrocities and fragmenting opposition by preventing the dead from being honoured and their families from properly mourning (17). This practice, they contend, does not solely focus on defeating enemies but primarily intends for “territorial reconquest of the motherland, and a tool to send grassroots movements into confusion” (17). The mass graves, as such, emerge not only as sites of death but as tools of political and psychological warfare designed to stabilize authoritarian regimes. The subaltern is represented through the mediated perspectives of the elites, Iqbal Chaudhary and Anil Tissera. Their narratives often oscillate between deriding subaltern myths—mocking their struggle for sustenance and survival and dismissively labelling them naive. The disconnect between the elite and the subaltern is seen when Iqbal, a Chaudhary, absolves himself of responsibility by characterizing subaltern narratives as “alleged” or unsubstantial truths in the form of “oral histories.” This dismissal exposes his indifference toward subaltern flight despite being aware of the atrocities committed against them by the Zamindari patriarchs. His family, unscathed by the war and unpunished for the crimes committed against the villagers, continue to exert influence over the villagers despite the dissolution of their formal landlord status. Ondaatje explores this disconnect through Anil, a privileged professional who sets out to investigate the murder of a subaltern. She soon becomes aware of the systemic corruption and state-sanctioned 59 violence in Sri Lanka and begins to question the pervasive silence and the lack of resistance from the subaltern population against the state. As she finishes her report on the skeletons found in a government-protected burial site, she struggles with the disappearance of the skeleton, Sailor, from her temporary forensic laboratory. While presenting the findings, she boldly accuses governmental authorities of corruption and for the disappearance of Sailor’s skeleton. She refuses to take on a subordinate role despite being aware of the repercussions of her actions; this confidence stems from her elite status, which makes her immune to the risks encountered by the subaltern population. However, she disregards the dangers her actions may pose to subalterns such as Sarath, who supports her investigation. Unyielding, despite Sarath’s warnings, she pursues her accusations throughout the presentation, insisting on government involvement in crimes against humanity. However, Sarath, seeing the gravity of Anil’s assertions and their potential consequences, subtly undermines her by engaging her in a rhetorical diversion. “Mr. Diyasena, I’d like to remind you that I came here as part of a human rights group. As a forensic specialist. I do not work for you, I’m not hired by you. I work for an international authority.” He [Sarath] turned and directed his words to the audience. “This ‘international authority’ has been invited here by the government, has it not? Is that not right?” “We are an independent organization. We make independent reports.” “To us. To the government here. That means you do work for the government here.” (Ondaatje 390) In her misguided frustration, she confronts Sarath and rebukes him, declaring, “The skeleton I had was evidence of a certain kind of crime. That is what is important here. ‘One village can 60 speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims.’ Remember? I thought you represented more than you do” (Ondaatje 241). In her attempt to advocate for one victim, hoping to secure justice for others, her actions inadvertently lead to the loss of another subaltern life, that of Sarath Diyasena. His death resumes the silence of the subaltern, indicating the dire consequences that ensue when others presume to speak on their behalf without a deep understanding of the subaltern existence, identity, and the peril of their speech. Sarath’s life indeed revealed more than he ostensibly represented; he embodied why behind the subaltern’s silence. 61 Conclusion: I conclude with Jacques Derrida’s clarity on designating the victims of colonialism as phantoms due justice: No justice—let us not say no law and once again we are not speaking here of laws—seems possible or thinkable without the principle of some responsibility, beyond all living present, within that which disjoins the living present, before the ghosts of those who are not yet born or who are already dead, be they victims of wars, political or other kinds of violence, nationalist, racist, colonialist, sexist, or other kinds of exterminations, victims of the oppressions of capitalist imperialism or any of the forms of totalitarianism. Without this non-contemporaneity with itself of the living present, without that which secretly unhinges it, without this responsibility and this respect for justice concerning those who are not there, of those who are no longer or who are not yet present and living, what sense would there be to ask the question “where?” “where tomorrow?” “whither?”. (Derrida Spectres XVIII Exordium) This thesis contributes to scholarship on postcolonial studies of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka by employing psychoanalytic and trauma studies to decrypt the transgenerational phantom presence within the locus of postcolonial and postwar psyche and bodies. The significance of this thesis lies in its drive to reconfigure subalternity to move beyond being reduced to a phantom presence or ventriloquized within South Asian postcolonial discourse. It traverses the multi-narrative locales of post-independence Bangladesh and Sri Lanka through Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. 62 In this thesis, I contest established historical narratives by interrogating dominant-subordinate relationships and examining the complexities of subaltern voices, mainly through the lasting impacts of colonialism on contemporary identities in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. These frameworks provide a complex interplay of cultural, social, and political dynamics to analyze how the postcolonial subject negotiates the presence of the phantom in their psyche, induced by cultural, collective, and personal trauma. I employ Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, depicting the postcolony as a place of “self-consuming violence,” which provides a theoretical framework for understanding how postcolonial states exercise power by controlling and destroying human lives (“Banality” 2-5). Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok’s theories on transgenerational haunting and the phantom, along with Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory concepts, are crucial to understanding the implications of transgenerational trauma within postcolonial contexts. I employ these frameworks to show that the transmission of trauma across generations is critical to understanding how the transgenerational haunting of the phantom, combined with the necropolitical power of nation-states, reduces living subaltern bodies to the state of the living dead. I engage subaltern studies scholars postulating on subalternity to illustrate, first, how the re-presentation of subalterns as illiterate and non-political perpetrates their marginalization and, second, how the “channelling” of subaltern voices through representation reduces the subaltern to muteness. I focus on myths that preserve collective memories and articulate resistance within subaltern cultural narratives to address how subaltern societies convalesce from deeply embedded psychological wounds. In Seasonal Adjustments, the myths surrounding the Chaudhary family and the villagers of Shopnoganj serve as vehicles for encoding traumatic 63 memories. Iqbal Chaudhary’s struggle with vertically inherited memories reveals the pervasive influence of the transgenerational phantom. In contrast, the villagers of Shopnoganj struggle with the psychological impact of horizontally inherited traumas, emphasizing the need to confront and acknowledge the phantoms of the past to develop a subterranean form of speech for reconciliation and recognition in the form of myths. These myths function as repositories of collective trauma and instruments of resistance, providing a medium through which subaltern communities voice their suffering and resilience. In Anil’s Ghost, Anil Tissera’s investigation into political violence exposes the necropolitics of systemic corruption and violence in Sri Lanka. It delves into the multifaceted dimensions of violence beyond the overt theatre of war, unravelling its insidious manifestations within the spheres of surveillance, dismemberment, and deaths under the grip of state authority. The first objective of this thesis is to examine the pervasive silence and lack of resistance within the subaltern population to emphasize the complexities of their struggle for justice. The second objective is to determine how subaltern myths and oral histories are as vital as nonfiction historical accounts, as one without the other may leave gaps in the archives and our understanding of ongoing postcolonial and subaltern discourse. 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Thesis/Dissertation
eng
English
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Paltin, Judith, 1959-
The secrets of the postcolonial subaltern : psychoanalytic and postmemory configuration in Adib Khan’s Seasonal Adjustments and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost
Text