Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:53:02.192Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Remembering Violence and Possibilities of Mourning

Psychoanalysis, Partition Literature, and the Writings of Sa’adat Hasan Manto

from Part II - In Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

Vera J. Camden
Affiliation:
Kent State University, Ohio
Get access

Summary

The Partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1947 into modern nation states of India, Pakistan is the historic event that not only inaugurated nationalities where political identities were based on religious differences, but also erased the collective identities different religious communities shared in their struggle against British colonialism over two centuries. In the celebration of India’s independence, the unprecedented violence of Partition is written out of the narrative of the nation as an aberration, a cataclysmic moment of madness. This chapter engages with this moment of madness captured in the Urdu short stories of Sa’adat Hasan Manto and highlights the psychoanalytic role of literature in remembering the violence that haunts India in the its pervasive communal strife. Focusing on Manto’s short stories, this chapter explains how literature allows working through the repressed violence of Partition fostering possibilities of mourning collective communal losses.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×