People’s War Trauma Narratives: A Study of Their Affective Economy

Abstract

The dissertation studies four People’s War narratives ─ Palpasa Café, Forget Kathmandu An Elegy For Democracy, Sipahiki Swasni (A Soldier’s Wife), Stories of Conflict and War which show trauma rendition as a complex and fallible process and one inflected with cultural politics of emotion. Although the primary war narratives express trauma with varying degrees, a certain bent of mind of the writers plays a seminal role in determining the true representation of trauma and affect. The evocation of emotional response of the readers in war narratives is charged up with the ideological postulations of the writers. In light of trauma and affect theory of La Capra and Sara Ahmed respectively, the dissertation tries to unearth the way to trauma transference that helps acknowledge the traumatic plight of the victims. The dissertation brings forth the latent ideological conjectures of the writers to produce certain kinds of emotional reactions to the victimhood of the war victims. Giorgio Agamben’s ideas have also been brought to give a true picture of the victims and the narration of the writers. The research assumes that the measuring rods of trauma and affect theory applied to analyse Palpsa Café and Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy For Democracy frustrate the readers who do not find the requisites of trauma transference having been adopted in these narrative texts. On the contrary, these are clad with ideological underpinnings that make them be aligned with only a certain group of readers. The dissertation argues that Sipahiki Swasni and Stories of Conflict and War stand tall from the perspective of trauma transference and unprejudiced evocation of emotion for the true war victims.