Post Memory as Trauma in Anees Salim’s The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Abstract

Memory studies is considered as an interdisciplinary field that uses memory as a technique for remembering the past. This paper studies the novel, The Blind Lady’s Descendants by Anees Salim with cross references to the concept of post memory put forth by Prof. Marianne Hirsch. Defining various related ideologies in memory and culture and memory and the self, Hirsch explores experiences of the past that make themselves known through stories, images, and behavior they perceived while growing up. The study elucidates the depiction of trauma as post memory through the association of the present generation to the personal, collective and cultural trauma of the past generation in the narrative. The novel is written in the form of a long suicide note of a twenty a -six-year-old boy, Amar Hamsa. The trauma instigated by the death of his sister, is followed by Amar’s discovery of the suicide note of his maternal uncle, Javi. The inklings of post memory make its appearance through this. Amar’s behavior and fate blends with Javi’s owing to a forged connection between them through the diary. Various theorists like Menakem, Wertsch and Brockweiser has explored on the workings of collective memory, intergenerational transmission of trauma and narrative and psychoanalysis. They have been cross-examined too, with respect to the memory interventions in the narrative. Post memory leads Javi’s narratives to dominate Amar’s consciousness, entirely evacuating his own story.