Trauma and the negotiation of national identity in Kiran Desai's the inheritance of loss

• Main Author: Mira Shazliyana Artacho Dy
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59292
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This essay is concerned with the presentation and treatment of cultural trauma in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), as well as its use in framing the ontological approaches leveraging the negotiation and formulation of a coherent national identity in post-colonial Indian narratives. Through the lens of critical work on sub-alterity, trauma in literature, and cultural imperialism, I will be investigating the ways in which Desai maps the impact of trauma onto the narrative of experience: through language, the consumption of food, and the body. The examination of these dimensions of experience provides a framework through which Desai’s narrative discusses and navigates the fragmentation of collective and national identity in post-colonial Indian communities.