Responsibility to the Traumatised Other in Manto’s Partition Stories

Abstract

This dissertation concentrates on or analyses Sa’adat Hassan Manto’s partition stories that reflects or presents his humanism through the emphasis on responsibility to the Other, in this case, towards the traumatised partition victims. Furthermore, his partition stories present the realism of partition violence starkly but humanistically-morally rather than culturally-ethically. Drawing upon the theory of responsibility to the Other, this dissertation assumes that to be considered a good, true and authentic representation of communal violence, literature should be purged of all sentimentality of the writer and s/he should take the moral responsibility for all crimes and evils committed by giving agency to the traumatised victims, and Manto’s partition stories have these mentioned qualities. This dissertation draws upon Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas’s theory of responsibility to the Other, Jacques Derrida’s concepts such as “democracy to come,” “cosmopolitanism,” and “forgiveness;” and Giorgio Agamben’s concepts such as “Muselmann,” bare life, and agency. By drawing upon the mentioned theorists, this dissertation argues that Manto’s partition stories are true and authentic representation of macabre violence which invests the victims with the agency of their trauma; and projects him as a responsible writer and a true humanists, a champion of the human rights.