A Chronotopic Analysis of Transgenerational Trauma in Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography
Abstract
The 1947 Indian partition caused significant trauma for Indian Subcontinent communities primarily because many individuals were forced to leave their families and properties as they made the transit from India to Pakistan. Initially seen as altruistic, these immigrants later developed a negative reputation as outsiders and undesired refugees. Utilising Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope, this study investigates the ways in which the complex inter-racial relationships in the city of Karachi need to be contextualised through spatiotemporal perspectives in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Kartography (2002). By deploying a Pakistani-specific modification of Bakhtin’s chronotopes, this article intersects temporal considerations with transgenerational memory as it is mapped on both the physical and imaginary geography of Karachi. This article interrogates Shamsie’s depiction of the racial and ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic Pakistan in the wake of the civil unrest of 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, with after-effects that are inherited by the next generation. This article contends that estrangement in the novel exemplifies the ways in which immigrants of the second and third generations in Karachi experience transgenerational trauma owing to the legacy of colonial rule, which resulted in the 1947 Partition, through a research method derived from applying the modified chronotopic lens. The overlapping markers of race, class, ethnicity and the ensuing migration since the second and third generations were viewed as outsiders and “Others” in the host culture can therefore be connected to chronotopes from a spatio-temporal and post-memory perspective. Pursuant to this, this article explores the impact of identity axes such as gender, class, and ethnicity on experiences over time and the trauma of the Partition and civil war of 1971 across generations and the ways in which subjectivity is implicated in the different ways in which time and space are conceived.
Keywords: Indian partition 1947; 1971 Civil war; maps; trans-generational trauma; Spatio-temporality
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