Review of Kabir

Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971 and Modern we might conclude that the Bengali narrative is
South Asia. By Ananya Jahanara Kabir. (New permeated by this amnesic and peripheralised
Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2013. 255 pp. ISBN: disposition. This 1971 post-amnesic generation
978-81-88965-77-9). has consequently found itself facing the necessity
of rescuing these post-memory narratives vitiated
Academically approached and discussed by silences and forgetfulness.
has been the reterritorialization and secession Unlike East Pakistan noiseless and her-
of the South Asian subcontinent. Orientalists metic enlightenment, argues Kabir in “Terracota
have, from multidisciplinary arenas, debated Memories,” West Pakistan is singularised by
the motivation and resulting consequences of its continental openness. This pre-Islamic na-
Partition. In the same vein, Ananya Jahanara tion has worked as transitional meeting-point
Kabir provides the reader an analysis that is not for a varied number of cultures: ranging from
only postcolonial and transreligious but also pre- Aryans to Buddhist including Greek.
bio-cartographic and psychosomatic. Memory Through the symbol of the Terracota, the author
and trauma studies have been recently consid- laconically draws two converging lines between
ered at the vanguard of cultural studies thanks this multiculturally primitive and ‘mythified’
to the remarkable work of scholars such as Kali archeology and reinterpreted artisanal capital-
Tal’s Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of ism. It is nevertheless during this section when
Trauma, Nayanika Mookherje’s “Aesthetics, Af- I find Jahanara Kabir’s auxiliary contributions
fect, and the Bangladesh War Crimes Tribunal” to be periphrastically redundant, if not too
or Monica J. Casper’s Critical Trauma Studies personal. Just to raise an objection, some of the
among others. Needless to say, this innova- literary examples provided by the author are
tive territory offers postcolonial studies new so extensively illustrated that she accidentally
readings that claim consideration. Thus, and blurs the storyline. I however sympthasise with
owing mainly to Kabir’s interocular narration, some of the postulated representations for they
Partition’s Post-Amnesias takes the reader to an exquisitely support the author’s final hypothesis
ekphrastic journey through the [hi]story of the when she sheds some light on the syncretic and
REVISTA CANARIA DE ESTUDIOS INGLESES, 76; 2018, PP. 279-280 279

Indo-Pak territory and its resulting nostalgic jeopardising contiguity between these two yet
narratives. irreconcilable generations.
This manual is deftly grouped into a In the second part, “Deep Topographies,”
precursory introduction, followed by two I personally find captivating how Kabir’s ar-
theoretically condensed main chapters and its chaeologic analysis introduces both ancient and
succeeding conclusions. The first section entitled contemporary arts as an articulating mechanism
“Between 1947 and 1971,” recounts the inter- in the formation of Pakistani and Bangladeshi
generational memories and collective traumas identities. This superb revision aims, in this first
of a pre- liberalised and post-regionalised India. “Terracota Memories” section, to diagnose the
These consequent traumas, the author indicates, preeminent intergenerational and geopolitical
will eventually culminate into the categorical reasons for this pre-Islamic inheritance sepul-
mutilation of a community’s cohesive identity ture. On the one hand, the resulting loopholes
and, by extension, prompt new ways of under- of Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamist, autocratic regime and,
standing Pakistani oneness. In the following on the other the orientalised post-9/11 vision of
subchapter “The Phantom Map”, Kabir explores the Western over Muslim countries —when not
the decolonisation of Pakistan along with the a constant, improper comparison with a Taliban-
neo-colonisation of a cartographically trapped ised neighbouring Afghanistan. Kabir indeed
West Pakistan over its eastern faction. The [hi] demands significant attention towards this
story of former East Pakistan, Bangladesh, was cocooned Pakistani deiknyomenian geo-body.
‘palimpsestally’ memorialised and, most impor- It becomes clear from this chapter that post-
tantly, deliberately translated through the eyes of 1947/1971 amnesias are not merely interpreted
its domineering neighbours. This being the case, in line with archaeogeographic evidences. On
the contrary, these traumas are, as previously commune —although it might be easily mended
stated, very much connected with a visual and by restructuring the preceding ideas— with
sometimes fetishised artistic past that, in terms some of the literary examples she presents before
of identity appropriation, becomes anachronic the readers’ eyes. This text however offers new
and voyeuristically colonial. As a matter of fact, harvested territories on Trauma Studies with
it is in the last chapter, “The Enchanted Delta,” multiple compelling hypotheses. As evidenced
when the author concludes that these un-/shared in this review, I am fascinated by the role of
cultural signifiers, along with domestic and per- arts – and its consequent conglomerates – in the
sonal segregation (religion, politics, marriages...), broken cartography of the subcontinent and its
catalysed the unhomely state of South-Asian resulting execution on identity configuration.
people confined between either literal or meta- Finally, I personally, as both reader and scholar,
phorical trenches. The unhomed has therefore appreciate these personal aromas one might
taken advantage of these archaegeographical directly smell from her private narration. This
inconsistencies to deliberately recreate new book, needless to say, is not only academically
intercultural identities based on this fluctuating designed but aims to heal the post-1947/1971
and in-between condition. yet bleeding past.
All in all and as far I am concerned, Ja-
hanara Kabir’s attempt to compile innovative Jairo Adrián-Hernández
narratives on the post-Partition debate succeeds University of La Laguna
in numerous ways. As previously said, I do not DOI: http://doi.org/10.25145/j.recaesin.2018.15.025
REVISTA CANARIA DE ESTUDIOS INGLESES, 76; 2018, PP. 279-280 280

Review of Kabir

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Review of Kabir

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Review of Kabir

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971 and Modern we might conclude that the Bengali narrative is

REVISTA CANARIA DE ESTUDIOS INGLESES, 76; 2018, PP. 279-280 279

You might also like