Trauma and referentiality in Bhabani Bhattacharya's famine novels
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5160775 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Babli Sinha (0000-0002-2083-7540, Kalamazoo College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 68-81 |
| Publication date | 2020-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Dynamics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0921-3740 • E-ISSN: 1461-7048 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0921374019900699 |
| OpenAlex | W3001364347 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 6 |
Bhabani Bhattacharya's novels, So Many Hungers! and He Who Rides a Tiger, provide an epistemological alternative to imperial narratives about the Bengal famine of 1943, that aligns with the concept of the minor as a cultural counter-discourse. Bhattacharya resists representations of a passive, humble population accustomed to poverty by featuring individuated characters with a realist aesthetic. Yet, realism is fractured by the mnemonic (silence, screams, ellipsis), and Bhattacharya shifts protagonists from referential to performative notions of identity. These techniques produce a sense of kinship with the famine victims and question the possibility of the referential representation of trauma
Aesthetics · Art · Famine · Identity (music · Kinship · Literature · Metanarrative · Narrative · Performative utterance · Population · Realism · Representation (politics · Silence · Sociology · Subaltern · Anthropology · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2024 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |