Partition Critics

 " What is theoretically innovative and politically motivated is the need to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These 'in between ' spaces provide terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood. Singular or communal that initiates new signs of identity and innovative sides of collaboration and contestation in the act of defining society itself" - basically he is asking us to identify us those moments where the cultural differences are articulated. How do you define a nation. It is a idea of cultural influences. 

This moment is an undefinal space which is articulated in a way in which seperate political Identities who wanted to identify themselves as different represent a identity marker for them as a separate unit, here religion played the role of identity marker. This in different spaces provide terrain 

Partition of British India is that moment which provides the differences. We started identifying ourselves in Hindus and Muslims with this single event.

Post Independence the government's only focus was on Hindu Refugees. 

How memorial shape the understand of past?

Eric Hobsbwan - he wrote world history in 4 volumes memory is life is always carried by groups of living people, therefore it is impermanent evolution. History is our generalized record of our past, it is dispassionat, reflection and at times and at Times an assessment or inspection of our past but history is also a kind of memory. It's in retrospect that we try to look at past and at times focuses only on facts. These are subjected facts felt, experienced and lived. Not always written down or recorded but something linked closely to the memory is the kind of forgetting. While remembering memory we try to earse certain parts of it. A personal memory operates in the realm of individual world. 

What is remembered is always a postive sort of part whereas the negative is kind of erased. 

There is a constant anchoring for the world which was with peace at itself which was thrown into a world of chaos. How do you remember trauma? It is the trauma actually which prevents them to talk about the violence. There is a desire to go back to past to correct it but obviously it can't be . It's the memory of lack of preparedness. You are oscillating between the past , lack of preparedness and present. 

Manto

He was a extremely busy writer. He was prolific, he wasn't apologetic about it as he was writing professionally. He knew several languages and translated several Russian works into Urdu. Progressive writers association (PWA) he was a member of it, the idea was to produce literature of Have nots. The most of the Urdu works are influenced by it. But certain writers choose to remain away from this organization. he was a singular writer who choose to stand alone as he didn't understand the idea of socialism which was brought forward by other writers. He wanted to have his own kind of story telling which he manages to despite constant criticism. He said that ' if it's the cruel world i will depict the cruel world i don't want to sanitize it as it's not my job'. 

- he lived in Bombay and never thought the city would ever turn into communal Battle ground so he went to Lahore. The trauma of migration turns him into alcoholic and affected him badly. The reconciliation was never attained. He never made peace with the idea of partition till death he continued to live with this pain and questions the validity of such act. 

He has been in asylum because at that time alcoholism was treated in asylum so he had a deep knowledge about the space. 

He become one of the biggest critic of idea of nation. He was trying to subvert the idea of political leadership and nationalism. His writings undergo a certain evolution he began charting the pains directly before the audience. He implicates himself into the violence. 

What my mind couldn't resolve was the question what country do we belong to now, India or Pakistan and whose blood has been shed mercilessly everyday. A terrible chapter of blood tears and violence was added to history. India was free. Pakistan was free from the movement of its birth. But in both states the slavemnent of people continued by prejudices . - Hasan in his edited volumes of books published by Roly books ; India partition the other face of freedom published in 1995 , written in 1948 by Manto 

Violence of Partition

Frantz fanon- the wretched of the earth " itt so happens that the unpreparedness of educated classes, the lack of partical link between them and mass of people, their laziness and let it be said they are cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to the tragic mishaps" 

Colonisation itself is in essence itself a very violent enterprise. 

These violence is the very killing of identities which you associated with yourself earlier. 

Man made sea of blood - Manto calls it in human terms rather political

32 narrative constitutes Siyah Hashiye (Black margin area)- first narrative is Saat-e- Shereen

Toba Tek Singh

Limin( the threshold - the space between in and out)- liminal- liminality ( in between) 

The man house that Manto creates is a threshold between the same world. It is the in betweenness used by Manto

History of Madness - 

Madness as counter to reason, challenge to reason, alternative mode of human existence

"The mad man on his crazy boat set sails for the other world. And it is from the other world that he comes that he disembarks. This enforced navigation is both regress division and absolute passage. Serving to underline in real and imaginary terms. The liminal situation of the mad in the society" - Bhishan singh is that character who exists in this space which is neither inside not outside

It was a highly symbolic role of a mad man made clear by the mental geography involved where the madman was confined at the gates of the cities. His exclusion was his confinement and if he had no prison other than the threshold itself he has still detained. 

When Manto places Bhishan singh there he see him trap there and he continues to lay their till his death instead of dragging the body . To represent the essential human spirit which was slaturrd in the voilence and conodrum of partion. And challenges both nations of their ideas about nationalism and patriotism. 

BORDER STORIES

Partition as landscape of knowledge emotions. 

Kind of socio economic effect seen on different localities ( border lines) is presented in border stories. 

Rotating village markets were affected because of partition. They used to sell very unique items and set up market for 2 days . Now after partition marketing became a cross border effect. It exposed them to harassment by the state authorities. They are now left with just one option to smuggle for survival. Hili is a small town it is cut in half by border and the market on the Indian side was deprived of fish and other vegetables which used to arrive by train there. The landlords/ middleman now started to go for corruption by buying from small dwellers as these people didn't have proper documentation for trade so these middleman took advantage of this. 

Now farmers left agricultural and joined labour for survival. They would earn a meagle earning. They also joined illegal trade system which also included some state officials. 

Many refugees claim that the border land was there. 

KALOIBIBI

Women played an important rule 

Hena Das was a communist party member

How memory plays an important role in this narratives?

- the post memory: when we indirectly experience the traumatic memories, which are passed on to us from others or the previous generation.

This text give us the idea of history from below at times of partition. 

None of the texts talks about post memory but it becomes post memory when we read it 

These incidents were not paid attention by the center

More about challenging socio economic systems than border creating.

Difference between Maulika and Kaloibibi?

Presence of subaltern figure 

CRITIC ON MEMOR

The Generation of Post- Memory

By- Marianne and Hirsch

Title: The generation of post memory writing and visual culture after the Holocaust. 

She describes post memory describes the relationship that the generation after- bears to the personal, cultural and collective trauma for those who came before. 

Sh is concerned about The trauma of holocaust for her the 'generation after ' refers to those who survived wars as young children and to the second generation the children of survivors. 

Post memory is not identical to memory it is rather an experience that one didn't experience directly. The distinction between post memory and memory is identical to frued's psychical and material reality between our experiences as it is governed by the unconscious and conscious process where the unconscious may not be directly present but their effects are not less palpable.

Post memory connection with the past are not mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection and creation. Therefore it is not similar an imitation that comes after the real or original it is rather a meaningful experience in itself. It is an additive to the original. 

She made mediation central to her ideas of post memory and emphasis on that notion that post memory is not an identity postion or social movement.

She acknowledged that the survivor memories can overwhelm their children but refuses to accept that these experiences makes those children victims. She therefore emphasis on the productive tension of post memory which is at one's direct or indirect in terms of fantasy or projection. These are like Freud's screened memory. That is they are distortions but are generative rather than imprisoning. In post memory everything depends upon how critically and self consciously people react to post traumatic events. Hirsch use identification as a key term in the development of the idea of post memory. 

Rememory describes an unhealthy relationship whith past despite the similarity with post memory. Re- memory is opposite of post memory. It is an immersive experience that lacks the critical distance of post memory. Implying that there is an over identification only to self wounding and retraumatisation . Post memory then is a mode of identification that transmits the bodily memory of trauma but retains the critical distance from that event . 

Susan Sontat . 

Because photography re- materialises or brings to the life post event as it distances us from the past through it reminder of the absence.