PARTITION AND THE FRAGMENTED SUBJECT: A LACANIAN-FREUDIAN READING OF MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, THE SHADOW LINES, AND TAMAS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/btajpd19Keywords:
Partition Literature, Lacan, Freud, Symbolic Order, Otherness, Lack, Melancholia, Subjectivity, Identity, South Asian LiteratureAbstract
The Partition of India in 1947 continues to shape South Asian literary representations of identity, memory, and belonging. While existing scholarship has largely focused on trauma and memory, the present study examines how Partition reshapes subjectivity through a comparative psychoanalytic reading of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines (1988), and Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas (1974). Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s concepts of the Symbolic Order, the Other, and Lack, and supported by Sigmund Freud's theories of repression and mourning/melancholia, the study employs close textual reading and comparative thematic analysis. The study attempts to highlight that Partition is represented not simply as a historical event but as a continuing disruption of symbolic structures that shape identity and social relations. The study highlights the relationship between symbolic instability, otherness, and unresolved loss in shaping post-Partition subjectivity
References
1.Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.
2.Freud, Sigmund. "Mourning and Melancholia." The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey, vol. 14, Hogarth Press, 1957, pp. 243–58.
3.Freud, Sigmund. "Repression." The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey, vol. 14, Hogarth Press, 1957, pp. 141–58.
4.Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. Ravi Dayal Publisher, 1988.
5.Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. Columbia UP, 2012.
6.Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Translated by Bruce Fink, W. W. Norton, 2006.
7.Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, translated by Alan Sheridan, W. W. Norton, 1998.
8.LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.
9.Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge UP, 2001.
10.Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
11.Sahni, Bhisham. Tamas. Translated by Jai Ratan, Penguin Books India, 2001.
12.Talbot, Ian, and Gurharpal Singh. The Partition of India. Cambridge UP, 2009.
13.Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Duke UP, 2000.
