Shabari Choudhury Art As A Device of Post Memory and Trauma

Department of Art History and Art Appreciation
Faculty of Fine Arts

JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA
This is to certify that Ms. Shabari Choudhury Enrolment No.

11-6760 is a student of M.F.A. Final Year, Department of Art
History and Art Appreciation, Faculty of Fine Arts. She has
submitted her dissertation title d “Art as a device of Postmemory”
under the guidance of Ms. Mrinal Kulkarni for the academic
session 2012-13 as partial fulfillment of the M.F.A in Art History
and Art Appreciation and it has not been submitted earlier
anywhere. This dissertation is submitted for evaluation.
(Head) (Guide)
i
Acknowledgement
I would like to sincerely thank everyone who has helped me make this
dissertation possible. I am thankful to all those people who have contributed
to its completion and I owe my profound gratitude to all of them.
I am sincerely and deeply thankful to my guide, Ms. Mrinal Kulkarni, whose
encouragement, supervision and support from the preliminary to the
concluding level enabled me to complete this dissertation. She has gone
through the project and has made necessary corrections as and when
needed. It would have been next to impossible to write this dissertation
without her help and guidance.
I would like to thank our head of the department Prof. Ghazanfar Zaidi for his
unrelenting support during the entire academic year.
I am truly grateful to my teachers Dr. Nuzhat Kazmi and Ms. Sanhita Bhowal
for their constructive comments and stimulating discussion we had during the
whole academic session for better understanding of the subject.
Above all, I would like to thank my parents, brother and extended family for
their never ending support and my friends for their encouragement and
valuable inputs.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the entire staff of the Art History
Department. I would like to especially thank Mr. Khalid, Mr. Akhtar, Mr. Anil,
Mr. Deepak, Mr. Wahid and all others at the Dean’s office.
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I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the librarians and staff
members of the Lalit Kala Academy, National Gallery of Modern Art and
Jamia Millia Islamia for their support.
Lastly, I offer my regards to all of those who supported me in any respect
during the completion of this dissertation.
Shabari Choudhury
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement ii
List of Plates vi
INTRODUCTION 1-9
1.0 Aim 1
1.1 Research Question 1
1.2 Research Premise 1
1.3 Personal Motivation 4
1.4 Research Interest 4
1.5 Formulation of the Research Question 6
1.6 scope and Limitation 7
1.7 Outline of the Dissertation 7
LITERATURE REVIEW 10-22
2.0 Aim 10
2.1 Memory Study Today 11
2.2 Postmemory 19
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23-26
3.0 Aim 23
3.1 Research Method 23
3.2 Area of Interest 24
3.3 Formulation of the Research question 24
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3.4 Theoretical framework and devices 25
POSTMEMORY AND TRAUMA 27-60
4.0 Aim 27
4.1 An Understanding of Trauma 27
4.2 Trauma, remembering and the 1947 Partition 31
4.3 Trauma and representation 34
4.4 Trauma, Art and Postmemory 36
4.5 Nalini Malani –In search for Vanished Blood 43
4.6 Inference 47
4.7 Vishwajyoti Ghosh –Restorying the Partition: This
side, that side. 52
4.8 Inference 56
CONCLUSION 61-64
FURTHER SCOPE 65
BIBLIOGRAPHY 66-69
IMAGE SOURCES 70
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LIST OF PLATES Page no.
Plate 1. Serial Tamas, Govind Nilhani, 1986 39
Plate 2. Film Earth, Deepa Mehta, 1998. 39
Plate 3. Installation Lessons of Darkness, Christian Boltanski, 40

Mid 1980s
Plate 4. Linien Strasse 137, Slide Projection of Police Raid on 40

Former Jewish Residents, Berlin, Shimon Attie. 1991
Plate 5. Installation Lessons of Darkness, Odessa monument, 40

Christian Boltanski, 1989-2003
Plate 6. Tower of faces, Yaffa Eliach, Shtetl Collection, US 41

Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1890 and 1941.
Plate 7. Image from the Tower of faces, Yaffa Eliach, Shtetl 41

Collection, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1890 and 1941.
1. Plate 8. Light leaks, winds meet where the waters spill deceit, 42
Reena Saini Kallat, metal, sacred thread, fly zapper with UV
fluorescent tubes and electrified grid 85 x 173 x 20 in, 2008-
2010
Plate 9. Documentary film Abar Ashibo Phire ,Supriyo Sen, 42

2003
Plate 10.Remembering Toba Tek Singh, Nalini Malani, Video 49

Installation, 20 minutes looped, sound, 1998-99
Plate 11. Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, 49

Nalini Malani, Video Installation , 5 Projections, 5 1/2 mins, 2005
Plate 12. In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 Channel 49

Video/ Shadow Play, with 5 rotating reverse painted Mylar
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cylinders, Sound, 11 minutes, 2012
Plate 13. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 50

Channel Video/ Shadow Play, with 5 rotating reverse painted
Mylar cylinders, Sound, 11 minutes, 2012




Plate 18. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Vishwajyoti 58

Ghosh, 2013
Plate 19. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, An Old 58

Fable, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
Plate 20. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Border, 58

Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
Plate 21. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Tamasha-e- 59

Tetwal, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
Plate 22. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, An Afterlife, 59

Plate 23. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Fault Lines, 59
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Plate 24. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Vishwajyoti 60

Ghosh, 2013
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1
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Aim
This chapter delineates reasons responsible for the undertaking of this
study. The reasons are largely personal and based on interests and
experiences of growing up as a second generation migrant.
The aim of this study is to understand whether or not art can convey or pass
on the memories (specifically of trauma) of the creator to the viewer and do
these transmitted memories get absorbed by the viewers as their own
personal memories.
1.1 Research Question
Can and does an artwork become a device for transmission of
Postmemory1?
1.2 Research Premise
“Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't.” (Irving, 1990)
The above quote forms an entry into this dissertation. ‘A prayer for Owen
Meany’ written by John Irving is the story of one of the central characters and
narrator of the novel, John Wheelwright. My interest in the novel lies in its
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According to Professor Marianne Hirsch Postmemory characterises experiences of those
who grew up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are
evacuated by the stories of the previous generation. Hirsch feels that children of survivors (of
traumatic events) live at a further temporal and spatial remove from the decimated world (of
their parents). She specifically coined the term with reference to the survivors of the
holocaust.
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memoire like format and its structure that has been constructed by moving
from memory to memory of John wheelwright’s life. The novel is set against
the backdrop of American historical events like the Vietnam War and the Iran-
contra Scandal, which were also the events that the author, John Irving, had
witnessed in his youth. Through his two characters in the novel, John
Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany, Irving creates a discourse
around religious faith and doubt.
The Character of John Wheelwright, who shares not only the author’s first
name but also his cynicism towards religion, is turned believer in the end
because of his friend Owen Meany, who without a doubt believed that he was
“god’s instrument” (Irving, 1990) and that “there are no coincidences”. (Irving,
1990)
The line “Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't”, appears in the
book’s first chapter titled ‘Foul Ball’. The chapter speaks of the death of the
narrator, John wheelwright’s mother, Tabby. The cause of Tabby’s death is a
foul ball hit by, Owen Meany, John’s best friend. In thinking of her death the
narrator, John Wheelwright says, “Later, I would remember everything. In
revisiting the scene of my mother’s death, I can remember everyone who was
in the stands that day; I remember who wasn’t there too...”
Here he refers to a past, which he finds painful and is therefore unable to
forget. We could also view this in a different manner, as a past that his
memory won’t allow him to forget. Once witnessed by him, it has been saved
by his memory, which apparently threatens to use it against him. There is an
overarching theme of living in the past that runs throughout the novel. Even as
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an adult the narrator seems to be living in the past. The line “Your memory is
a monster...” and many such references ascribed to the process of
remembering in the novel are indicative of the archival quality of memory, of
its capacity to store information in the deepest corners of our minds, ready to
be pulled out when needed. These however are memories (of john
wheelwright) built on events witnessed (by him) but what about those
memories that are not necessarily our own? Memories, which have been
created based on re-telling and second-hand information?
The author John Irving grew up not knowing his biological father and was
raised by his mother and step father. His biological father was an Army Air
Force pilot whose fighter plane was shot down over Japanese-occupied
Burma. Irving was not aware of his biological father until he was a grown man.
It is interesting to note that this theme of missing parent/parents can be seen
as a constant underlying track in many of Irving’s novels, from ‘The world
according to Garp’ to ‘A widow for a year’ and ‘A prayer for Owen Meany’,
almost as if the author unconsciously wrote it in.
“[...] the missing father subject — or missing parents, and missing children —
is not unique to this novel, and "Until I Find You" is a much more
autobiographical novel than "A Prayer for Owen Meany" but certainly not
knowing my father, and the mystery of the fact that no one would tell me much
about him, was a powerful spark to my imagination. If you keep asking about
a mystery man, your imagination begins to invent who he was.....” (Moore,
2009)
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Irving creates or rather re-creates an idea (in this case his father) based on
information [or the lack of it] that has been passed on to him by his mother
(his mother gave him a package of letters between her and his father and
newspaper clippings detailing his heroism during World War II). Having never
communicated or seen his father, Irving’s impression of him is created based
on someone else’s telling, their memories of him. But can this impression of
Irving’s then be also termed as memory? Or is it just a memory of another
memory?
1.3 Personal Motivation
My father came to Delhi in 1972. Growing up in Delhi as a second
generation East Bengal displaced person, I had never seen the place of my
forefathers origins (until recently in 2012) but my ‘memories’ were painted with
the narration of events from my father’s childhood. My father and I have not
shared the same childhood home or games but his narration of his memories
created an image of his childhood in my mind. But can this ‘Image’ be termed
as ‘memory’?
1.4 Research Interest
An understanding of such memories has been attempted by Professor
Marianne Hirsch In her text titled ‘Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile’.
Referring specifically to the holocaust, Professor Hirsch writes that for
survivors of the holocaust, memory is necessarily an act not only of recall but
also of mourning, mourning often inflected by anger, rage, and despair.
Children of these survivors live at a further temporal and spatial remove from
the decimated world of their parents but the power of mourning and memory,
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and the depth of the rift dividing their parents' lives, imparts to them something
that is similar to memory or is memory-like. This secondary or second-
generation memory she terms as Postmemory.
“Postmemory, describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to
the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before — to
experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and
behaviours among which they grew up. But these experiences were
transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute
memories in their own right [...] To grow up with overwhelming inherited
memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s
consciousness, is to risk having one’s own life stories displaced, even
evacuated, by our ancestors. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by
traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and
exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects
continue into the present.” (Hirsch, Columbia University Press, 2012)
This dissertation builds on the concept of Postmemory. Post partition India
has witnessed a proliferation of literature, art and film that extensively tell
about the atrocities of the communal riots and rampage that followed in the
wake of the India-Pakistan divide. Some of the survivors, who lived to tell the
gruesome tales, have transmitted their memories to their ‘next generation’
[here, I refer to All those who were not present at the time of the actual
occurrence] This I witnessed personally during a research survey conducted
in Old Delhi where I met with a number of second generation partition
survivors. An occurrence with far reaching after effects, even today, literature
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as well as films are being produced that deal with the issue and aftermath of
the partition. Why is that we choose to relive these memories of trauma
through visual, written and other media? How should one view art or text that
is created by the ‘next generation’, depicting the said event based on
‘inherited’ memories?
1.5 Formulation of the Research question
All artistic creation invariably carries the imprint of its creator. An artist
like all others has an individual subjectivity – his experiences, feelings, beliefs,
desires as well as memories. All of these invariably leave their trace in his
creations and perhaps form the invisible signature that distinguishes between
the works of two artists. Therefore, on a subcutaneous level, an artist’s
individual subjectivity and memories permeate all his creations. Even in the
process of exclusion, the deliberate ‘absence’ itself becomes an act of
creation. In the event that the said memories are traumatic or the artist is a
second generation survivor of a catastrophic event, traces of Postmemory can
also be present in the artwork. But does this then change the nature and
function of the artwork? Does it make the artwork into something beyond art?
Can and does such an artwork become an apparatus for the transmission of
Postmemory? This forms the overarching question in this dissertation, one
that I will be examining in the ensuing chapters through the artistic practice of
several artists.
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1.6 Scope and Limitation
Given the time frame and a lack of material on memory studies that is
specific to the Indian social, cultural and historical context, this study has
made use of memory study theories that are predominantly propounded from
a western/ west-centric point of view. The study is a qualitative analysis and
deals with two specific case studies, which perhaps may not be sufficient to
give us definitive answers. Besides academic texts, the research is
predominantly based on secondary interviews, articles and essays published
in journals and magazines.
1.7 Outline of the Dissertation
Below is a brief structure that the dissertation will follow.
1.7.1 Chapter 2 - Literature Review
Chapter 2 of the dissertation will explore literature published in the field
of memory studies by accredited scholars and writers and establish the
position of Postmemory in the field. It will discuss key terms and concepts that
are relevant to this dissertation. The aim of the chapter will be to situate
memory study as it is today and explore certain key concepts, namely -
collective memory, cultural memory, memory crisis and memory boom. This
will help in developing an understanding of the concept of Postmemory in its
entirety as well as in the context of this dissertation.
Although there is a plethora of terms and concepts that fall under the domain
of memory study, an examination of it all is not within the scope of this study
and requires a separate research of its own. The chapter will be divided into
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two sections. The first section will discuss key concepts that have originated
in the field. The second section of the chapter will be devoted specifically to
the exploration of the concept of Postmemory and the writings of Professor
Marianne Hirsch.
1.7.2 Chapter 3 - Research Methodology
Chapter 3 will give an outline of the methodology and approach
employed in this dissertation along with the theoretical framework used in
examining the case studies. For the purpose of this dissertation I will be using
Rosemarie Anderson’s method of Intuitive Inquiry. Intuitive inquiry is inclusive
of transpersonal experiences and can be blended with other research
methods. I have combined this approach along with personal narrative inquiry
to examine and arrive at a conclusion regarding the case studies examined in
the dissertation. This methodological approach seeks to incorporate
subjective and objective knowledge and posits that the personal is universal.
1.7.3 Chapter 4 - Postmemory and Trauma
Chapter 4 will examine in detail the formation of Postmemory that takes
place after a ‘Rupture’ in the social fabric due to a collective traumatic event
like the Partition and forced migration and its evidence in art. For this purpose,
I will be looking at the artistic practice of artist Nalini Malani with special
emphasis upon two of her works, remembering Toba Tek Singh and her
recent work In search for Vanished blood. The Second case study in this
chapter will be the Graphic novel, Restorying the Partition: This side, That
side, curated by artist and curator Vishwajyoti Ghosh.
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1.7.4 Conclusion
Based on the research and analysis of artworks, this section will state
findings and observations made during the research process as well further
possibilities of research that may be possible.
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2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Aim
As stated in the introduction, this dissertation builds on Professor
Marianne Hirsch’s concept of ‘Postmemory’ with the central problematic being
can and does an artwork become an apparatus for the transmission of
Postmemory?
The concept of Postmemory exists within the larger field of memory study and
research, which today is a burgeoning field in its own right. With many
scholars actively engaged in studying ‘memory’ and related phenomenon,
memory study has now become a largely interdisciplinary field. ‘Memory’
today has several additives - cultural, social, public and collective, which
‘enhance understandings of its wider scope and dynamics’ (Radstone &
Schwarz, 2010).
The aim of this chapter is to situate memory study as it is today and explore
certain key concepts, namely - collective memory, cultural memory, memory
crisis and memory boom. This will help in developing an understanding of the
concept of post memory in its entirety as well as in the context of this
dissertation. Although there are is a plethora of terms and concepts that fall
under the domain of memory study, an examination of it all is not within the
scope of this study and requires a separate research of its own.
10
The chapter is divided into two sections. The first section will discuss the key
concepts mentioned above. The second section of the chapter will be devoted
specifically to exploring the concept of post memory and the writings of
Professor Marianne Hirsch.
2.1 Memory Study Today
A reason for the surge in the study and research of memory today can
be traced back to the postmodernist notion that we are currently living in a
time of ‘social amnesia, in which we, as modern subjects, are cut off from the
pasts that have created us.’(Radstone & Schwarz, 2010).
One of the seminal works in the field is historian Pierre Nora’s Leslieux de
mémoire or places of memory. Les lieux de mémoire, published between
1984 and 1992, consists of a series of essays that Nora had secured from
French scholars and reinterpreted to present a new understanding. The
essays are a representation of how historical knowledge is documented. It is a
reading of the memory of French history within the framework of memory that
is vested in ‘statues, in objects, in street names, in ceremonies, in political
parties, in legends, in myths, even in historical works’ (Winter, 2000).
Essentially, there seem to be two distinctive voices that scholars of this field
seem to raise when it comes to situating memory in the present day context.
There are those, like Nora, who believe that subjects of this century are
disconnected from the past and that the reason we spend so much time
thinking about the past is because there is so little left of it. On the other hand,
scholars like Shil, Schwartz and Becker emphasize the continuities between
history and memory. Edward Shil's book Tradition reacted to the political
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opposition between tradition and progress, maintaining that scepticism and
rejection of tradition is at the very heart of tradition.
According to Barry Schwartz, an associate of Shil’s, “humans because of their
psychological constitution, cannot live without attachment to some object that
transcends and survives them, that there is a human craving for meaning that
appears to have the force of instinct.” (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
This need to be a part of something that changes individual existence is basic
to an understanding of what collective memory is. By making connects
between past events, to one another and to the events of the present,
collective memory becomes a part of culture's meaning-making tool.
2.1.1 What is Collective memory?
Contemporary use of the term "collective memory" can be largely
attributed to the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. His landmark text, Social
Frameworks of Memory was published in 1925, although by then the term
was already being used in a variety of contexts, some of which were related
while others were unrelated to sociology. Halbwachs’s was interested in the
variability of memory, a problem that was posed by the philosopher Henri
Bergson in his work on memory. Bergson’s work on memory drew
Halbwachs's attention to the difference between the objective (often
transcendental) and subjective apprehension of the past: whereas new forms
of record keeping measured time and recorded history in increasingly uniform
and standardised ways, individual memory was still highly variable,
sometimes recording short periods in intense detail and long periods in only
the vaguest outline.(Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
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Halbwachs was also influenced by the sociologist Emile Durkheim who
attributed ‘variability of perceptual categories’ (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, &
Levy, 2011) to differences among forms of social organisation as opposed to
fluctuations of individual experience. Durkheim rejected the objectivist
accounts of time by studying how different societies produced concepts of
time that were unlike each other and depended, not on subjective experience
but changing forms of a society’s social structure. By connecting cognitive
order (time perception) with social order (division of labour), Durkheim thus
provided for Halbwachs a sociological framework for studying the variability of
memory raised by Bergson (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011).
According to Halbwachs, individuals cannot coherently and continually
remember outside of their group contexts. These he said are the necessary
social frameworks of individual memory. An example that he posits is the
impossibility of being certain of any particular childhood memory. According to
Halbwachs, as we become adults, it is becomes increasingly difficult to say
whether a memory from childhood is the outcome of stored features of the
actual moment or a composite created out of stored fragments, other people's
retellings and other dominant experiences.
Halbwachs’s colleague Marc Bloch, in his review on Halbwachs’s text,
comments on the insufficient explanation of how are memories passed down
from generation to generation within a group. Bloch felt that it was too
important a question to be left unanswered. He says, “Halbwachs, it seems to
me, scarcely addresses this question, most often limiting himself to
explanations of a certain finality and, if I may be so bold, to a slightly vague
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anthropomorphism.” (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011). He further
states, “It is not that I have any objection to speaking of "collective memory,"
just as we speak of collective representations or collective consciousness.
These terms are important and expressive, and their use is entirely legitimate,
but on one condition: that we do not automatically subsume all of the realities
that we label "individual memory" under the name of "collective
memory.”(Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
Bloch asks some very relevant questions that seem to have been missed or
omitted by proponents of collective memory. For instance, how does an
individual retain or recover his memories? How does a group retain or recover
its memories? Taking this further, he elaborates that traditional psychology
considered functioning of individual memory exclusive of the functioning of
collective memory. However, for Halbwachs the idea of an individual memory
completely separate from the social memory is an abstraction, devoid of
meaning. Bloch felt that while individual and social memory may be closely
linked, their functioning in certain ways are relatively distinct and elements
comprising them quite different.
“For a social group that exists longer than the life of one man to have a
memory, it is not enough that the members at one point in time hold in their
minds the representations of the group's past. It is also necessary that the
oldest members of the group transmit these representations to the youngest.
We are free to use the term "collective memory," but we must remember that
at least a part of what we are referring to is simply everyday communication
between individuals.” (Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
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In his critique of collective memory studies titled Finding Meaning in Memory:
A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies, Contemporary
German-American historian,Wulf Kansteiner makes observations that are
similar to Bloch’s. Kanstiener says that collective memory has not yet
sufficiently differentiated between individual and collective memory, which
according to him, is what has led to a misinterpretation of the nature of
collective memory, through a ‘Facile use of psychoanalytical and
psychological methods’ (Kansteiner, 2002).
In his critique, Kansteiner establishes a crucial difference between ‘collected
memories and collective memories’ (Kansteiner, 2002). According to him a
collected memory is an aggregate of individual memories that behaves and
develops just like its individual composites, and therefore can be studied with
the whole inventory of neurological, psychological, and psychoanalytical
methods and insights concerning the memories of individuals. Unfortunately,
collective memories do not behave according to such rules, but have their
own dynamics, for which we have to find appropriate methods of
analysis.(Kansteiner, 2002)
2.1.2 Cultural memory
“Many of the conceptually more interesting studies of memory gravitate
towards the term "cultural memory" in order to maintain and further develop
Halbwachs's emphasis on the materiality of memory”.(Kansteiner, 2002)
In his text Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, Egyptologist Jan Assmann
defines “cultural memory” as memory, which comprises of that body of
reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch,
15
whose 'cultivation' serves to stabilize and convey that society's self-image.
According to Assmann, “cultural memory” consists of objectified culture, that
is, the texts, rites, images, buildings, and monuments which are designed to
recall fateful events in the history of the collective.(Kansteiner, 2002)
German cultural theorist Aleida Assmann has written on the role of
technologies of memory, particularly writing and archive, among other topics.
In her essay Cannon and Archive, Assmann writes, “Our memory is highly
selective. Memory capacity is limited by neural and cultural constraints such
as focus and bias. It is also limited by psychological pressures, with the effect
that painful or incongruent memories are hidden, displaced, overwritten and
possibly effaced. On the level of cultural memory, there is a similar dynamic at
work. The continuous process of forgetting is part of social normality.”
In the essay, Assmann points to a very vital aspect of the memory debate –
the act of forgetting. She explains that in order to think about memory we
need to forget as well. Remembering by omission is what according to
Assmann comprises individual memory and this she attributes to the
biological limitations and psychological pressures that are imposed on the
brain. On a cultural level, she draws a parallel where the act of forgetting
takes place through material loss or material destruction of material
possessions.
“When looking more closely at these cultural practices, we can distinguish
between two forms of forgetting, a more active and a more passive one.
Active forgetting is implied in intentional acts such as trashing and destroying.
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Acts of forgetting are a necessary and constructive part of internal social
transformations; they are, however, violently destructive when directed at an
alien culture or a persecuted minority. Censorship has been a forceful if not
always successful instrument for destroying material and mental cultural
products. The passive form of cultural forgetting is related to non-intentional
acts such as losing, hiding, dispersing, neglecting, abandoning, or leaving
something behind. In these cases the objects are not materially destroyed;
they fall out of the frames of attention, valuation, and use.”(Olick, Vinitzky-
Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
2.1.3 Memory boom & Memory crisis
According to Richard Terdiman, the 19th century was a century of
‘memory crisis’(Radstone S. , 2000)and perhaps it is this crisis that lead to the
‘memory boom’ of the next centuries. According to Pierre Nora, in
contemporary times memory is dead but simultaneously he also believe it be
omnipresent. He states an interesting paradox, “memory is constantly on our
lips because it no longer exists.”
Richard Terdiman states that the 19th century ‘memory crisis’ erupted in
response to a profound sense of cultural and historical dislocation.(Radstone
S. , 2000) These dislocations severed the possibility of memory’s transparent
relation to the past.
But ‘memory crisis’ is not the situation any longer. Today, we live in an era of
‘memory boom’. German-American literary theorist Andreas Huyssen links
contemporary preoccupation with the past and memory’s resurgence with
both, a turning away from modernity’s faith in progress and the threat posed
17
by the instantaneity of new media to memory. In his text titled Present Pasts:
Media, politics, Amnesia, Huyssen observes that the contemporary obsession
with memory in public debates clashes with an intense public panic of
oblivion.
“The very structures of public media memory make it quite understandable
that our secular culture today, obsessed with memory as it is, is also
somehow in the grips of a fear, even a terror, of forgetting but the fear of
oblivion and disappearance operates in a different register as well. For the
more we are asked to remember in the wake of the information explosion and
the marketing of memory, the more we seem to be in danger of forgetting and
the stronger the need to forget.”(Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
Huyssen argues that our (society’s) public and private memorialisation are a
mechanism to counteract this fear and danger of forgetting. He further states
“The turn toward memory is subliminally energised by the desire to anchor
ourselves in a world characterised by an increasing instability of time and the
fracturing of lived space.”(Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
2.1.4 Memory and Transmission
According to American sociologist Ron Eyerman, “Memory provides
individuals and collectives with a cognitive map, helping orient who they are,
why theyare here and where they are going. Memory in other words is central
to individual and collective identity.”(Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
Subsequently, one can view the past as a collectively shaped, if not
collectively experienced, point of reference in time that serves to orient those
18
individuals within it. Eyerman further says that while the "past" may be
embodied in material objects, in the structure of a city or town, or the way
museums are arranged to recall aspects of the "past" but the narration of the
pastmeans is understood, interpreted and transmitted through language and
dialogue. These dialogues are told as stories, narratives which structure their
telling and influence their reception. Eyerman talks of ‘founding myths’
describing them as stories that tell who we are by retelling where we came
from.
“All nations and groups have founding myths, stories which tell who we are
through recounting where we came from. Such narratives form "master
frames" and are passed onthrough traditions, in rituals and ceremonies, public
performances which reconnect a group, and where membership is confirmed.
Within this process, “we" are remembered and "they" are excluded.” (Olick,
Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011)
2.2 Postmemory
In an interview published by the Columbia university press in 2012,
Marianne Hirsch defined Postmemory as following:-
“ ‘Postmemory’, describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to
the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before — to
experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and
behaviours among which they grew up. But these experiences were
transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute
memories in their own right. As I see it, the connection to the past that I define
as Postmemory is mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment,
19
projection, and creation. To grow up with overwhelming inherited memories,
to be dominated by narratives that preceded one´s birth or one´s
consciousness, is to risk having one´s own life stories displaced, even
evacuated, by our ancestors. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by
traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and
exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects
continue into the present.”
In her text, Past Lives, Professor Hirsch talks about how children of survivors
live at a further temporal and spatial remove from the decimated world of their
parents but the power of mourning and memory and the depth of the rift
dividing their parents' lives, impart to them something that is akin to memory.
This secondary or second-generation memory is what she calls as
"Postmemory”. In the same text, she examines the function of Postmemory in
the work of artists, like Christian Boltanski (French) and Shimon Attie
(American). According to professor Hirsch, these artists have attempted to
locate ‘aesthetic shapes’ that convey the mixture of ambivalence and desire,
mourning and recollection, presence and absence, which characterises
Postmemory. Working with the medium of photography, both artists have
experimented with archival photographs and family photographs to recreate
‘events’ that form the origin of these memories.
2.2.1 Traits of Post memory
Marianne Hirsch has described certain traits that can be considered as traits
or characteristics of Postmemory.
20
 According to Hirsch, what differentiates post memory from simple
reminiscing is a personally invested recreation of the past. It is a
personal need to remember that leads to a ‘new’ narrative of the event
that has passed.
 The recreation does not attempt to disguise the probing nature of the
work/ text to the past that it attempts to recreate.
 The work or text is marked by the recreation of a sense of absence, of
exile and of separation.
Hirsch cites the Yizker books2 as an example of this. According to Hirsch,
these memorial books act as witness and sites of memory because they
evoke and try to recreate the life that existed. In doing so, they become acts
of public mourning and forms of a collective Kaddish3. But they also perform
another role, that of being “sites where subsequent generations can find a lost
origin, where they can learn about the time and place they will never see [...]
Yizker books, with their stories and images, are documents to be invested
with life: they are spaces of connection between memory and
Postmemory.”(Hirsch, 2012)
2
The yizker bikher, or memorial books, prepared in exile by survivors of the pogroms, were meant to
preserve the memory of their destroyed cultures. The survivors of Nazi genocide built on this
memorial tradition and prepared for subsequent generations similar memorial books devoted to the
memory of their individual destroyed communities.
3
The term "Kaddish" is often used to refer specifically to "The Mourner's Kaddish", said as part of the
mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals and memorials.
21
To illustrate the difference between memory and Postmemory, Hirsch cites
French author Henri Raczymow's Tales of Exile and Forgetting, which
according to her is a memorial book but with a radically different form. She
juxtaposes this against the Yizker books to make the difference between
memory and Postmemory clear. According to Hirsch, if the writers of the
Yizker books are agents of memory, the narrator of Raczymow's Tales of
Exile and Forgetting is an agent of Postmemory. He is so because he gives
“narrative shape to the surviving fragments of an irretrievable past.” (Hirsch,
2012)
Hirsch considers photography as a true agent of Postmemory. She reasons
that since photographic images can survive large scale destruction and
cataclysmic events better when compared to oral or written narratives, these
images outlive their subjects function and act as ghostly revenants from an
irretrievably lost past world.
“Photographs, analog photographs, in particular are evidence of past
presence. They have an indexical relationship to the object that was before
the lens. But they also quickly acquire symbolic significance and thus they are
more than themselves.” (Hirsch, 2012) She cites the Holocaust as an example
here, which she explains is “remembered by a small number of iconic images
– the boy with his hands up from Warsaw, the gates of Auschwitz with the
“Arbeitmachtfrei” sign, the image of Anne Frank’s face.”(Hirsch, 2012)
22
3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.0 Aim
This chapter will give an outline of the methodology and approach
employed in this dissertation along with the theoretical framework used in
examining the case studies.
3.1 Research Method
For the purpose of this dissertation I will be using Rosemarie
Anderson’s method of Intuitive Inquiry.
“Intuitive inquiry joins intuition to intellectual rigor in a hermeneutical process
of interpretation intended for the study of subtle human experiences. Long
claimed as essential to wisdom in indigenous and spiritual traditions
worldwide, the subtle ways of the heart nourish and balance more analytical
ways of knowing.” (Anderson, 2006)
Intuitive inquiry is inclusive of transpersonal experiences and can be blended
with other research methods. I have combined this approach along with
personal narrative inquiry to examine and arrive at a conclusion regarding the
case studies examined in the dissertation. This methodological approach
seeks to incorporate subjective and objective knowledge and posits that the
personal is universal.
23
3.2 Area of Interest
This dissertation builds on the concept of Postmemory. Post partition
India has witnessed a proliferation of literature, art and film that extensively
deal with the atrocities of communal riots and rampage that followed in the
wake of the India-Pakistan divide. Some of the survivors, who lived to tell the
gruesome tales, have transmitted their memories to their ‘next generation’
[here, I refer to All those who were not present at the time of the actual
occurrence] through oral narratives.
This I witnessed personally during a research survey conducted in Old Delhi
where I met with a number of second generation partition survivors. An
occurrence with far reaching after effects, even today, literature as well as
films are being produced that deal with the issue and aftermath of the
partition. Why is that we choose to relive these memories of trauma through
visual, written and other media? How should one view art or text that is
created by the ‘next generation’, depicting the said event based on ‘inherited’
memories?
3.3 Formulation of the Research question
All artistic creation invariably carries the imprint of its creator. An artist
like all others has an individual subjectivity – his experiences, feelings, beliefs,
desires as well as memories. All of these invariably leave their trace in his
creations and perhaps form the invisible signature that distinguishes between
the works of two artists. Therefore, on a subcutaneous level, an artist’s
individual subjectivity and memories permeate all his creations. Even in the
process of exclusion, the deliberate ‘absence’ itself becomes an act of
24
creation. In the event that the said memories are traumatic or the artist is a
second generation survivor of a catastrophic event, traces of Postmemory can
also be present in the artwork. But does this then change the nature and
function of the artwork? Does it make the artwork into something beyond art?
Can and does such an artwork become a device for transmission of
Postmemories?
This forms the overarching question in this dissertation, one that I will be
examining in the ensuing chapters through the artistic practice of few artists.
Although professor Hirsch talks of this concept especially with relation to the
children of Holocaust survivors, she does feel that post memory may also
“usefully describe the second-generation memory of other cultural or
collective traumatic events and experiences.”
3.4 Theoretical framework and devices
In order to analyse artworks for the purpose of this dissertation I will
be using a theoretical framework that conceives of these works as ‘traumatic
imagery.’ Therefore, I will be using Trauma Theory as explained by Cathy
Caruth and her explanation of the belatedness of witness with regard to
traumatic events.
To Examine the Viewers response and connection to the artworks I will be
resorting to Jill Bennett’s explanation of the connection between affect,
empathy and art. Finally, to examine the process of how transmission occurs,
if at all it does, I will be looking at Marianne Hirsch’s concept of Postmemory.
Psychobiography and Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics will also be
used to supplement the examination in places.
25
The analysis of the artworks will be done using artists’ Interviews, critical
texts, academic texts, scholarly articles and images of the artworks.
26
4
POSTMEMORY AND TRAUMA
4.0 Aim
As stated in the introduction, this chapter will examine in detail, the
formation of Post memory that takes place after a ‘Rupture’ in the social fabric
due to a collective traumatic event like the Partition and forced migration as
well as its evidence in art. For this purpose I will be examining the works of
two artists – Nalini Malani’s work with shadow-play, In search for Vanished
blood (2013) and the graphic novel, Restorying the Partition: This Side, That
Side, curated by artist and curator Vishwajyoti Ghosh.
4.1 An understanding of Trauma
Since the early 1990s, trauma study has achieved a newfound
celebrated status within academics. In the year 1992, Shoshana Felman and
Dori Laub’s Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and
History was published, a seminal text on the subject. Along with Felman and
Laub’s text, Cathy Caruth’s edited collection Trauma: Explorations in Memory
(1995) and her monograph Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and
History (1996) have opened up the Humanities to the subject of trauma. In her
paper titled Getting over Trauma or What the Past Hides, Susannah Radstone
says, “Trauma theory, with its foregrounding of concepts, including flashbacks
and latency, has emphasised the continuing and damaging impact of trauma’s
past on the present. On trauma theory’s account, the present is held hostage
to an over-present—if unmasterable—past.”
27
In her text titled An introduction to “Trauma, Memory and Testimony”, Cathy
Caruth talks about Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s suggestion that the
Holocaust, as a traumatic event, may in fact be defined as a “collapse of
witness,” the impossibility for an individual or for collective consciousness to
integrate and respond to catastrophic events.
“The notion of testimony that grows out of the Freudian tradition [...] depends
on a fundamental temporal enigma that structures traumatic experience: the
delay in experiencing or knowing that attends upon (and in part constitutes)
the traumatic event and that guarantees its return at a later place and time.”
(Caruth, 2006)
Here, Caruth refers to the Freudian theory of trauma, which is the inseparable
bond between a ‘not knowing’ that is situated at the heart of the traumatic
event and its later insistent demand for recognition, for acknowledgment.
“This inherent displacement of the trauma from its own context also suggests
that its witness will always lie in a future beyond its immediate occurrence.”
(Caruth, 2006)
According to Caruth, the very structure of a traumatic event holds within it the
belatedness of the ‘witness’. This ‘witness’ invariably emerges in later
generations that are no longer linked by direct encounter to the traumatic
event. Yet, they nonetheless experience it as a ‘testimonial burden’ (Caruth,
2006).
The belated nature of trauma also allows for an ongoing act of witnessing that
is intergenerational. Although the survivors are not present, the witnesses
28
present at site of return (in a later generation that is separated by distance
from the actual traumatic event), are compelled to perform the act of
witnessing and produce a testimony. The lack of immediate assimilation of
trauma is what created the condition of an ongoing process of witnessing in
the future generations.
“The temporality of trauma—the delay of the event that always returns else-
where, in another place and time—in this sense implies an experience that
exceeds individual grasp and that cannot be thought within the framework of a
stable individual or collective identity.” (Caruth, 2006)
Art historian Griselda Pollock’s observations on trauma’s connection to art
resonate that of Caruth’s to the extent that they both draw from the Freudian
tradition of Psychoanalysis.
“Trauma as an event concerns the series of losses which mark and by which
subjectivity is formed: birth, loss of the breast, castration and loss of the loved
object as well as the primal scene, and/or seduction.” (Pollock,
Art/Trauma/Representation, 2009)
Pollock defends Freud’s theory of the structure of trauma: Shock-latency-
return of the repressed, which is also adopted by Cathy Caruth. According to
Pollock, Freud’s theory opens up politics and history to necessary recognition
of the powerful undercurrent of affects, generated initially around extreme yet
inevitable events of infantile life that occur before the psyche is formed fully to
handle them. These she says are possibly susceptible to primary repression
as a result of which no memory or knowledge of the event is passed to the
subject. At the time of occurrence of secondary, historical traumatic events,
29
which might have something in common with the repressed traumatic event,
there is a passing on of “unbound associated affects which invest themselves
in the ‘cavities’ carved by these (extreme events of childhood) formative
erosions.” (Pollock, Art/Trauma/Representation, 2009)
Though she draws from the psychoanalytic tradition, Pollock’s research is
grounded on critic and artist Bracha Ettinger’s concept of the Matrixial4, which
challenges Freudian and Lacanian concepts that favour Phallocentric
hegemony.
Ettinger proposes that art can become ‘a transport station of trauma’. Pollock
in her writings uses the concept of the Matrixial to read artworks, cinema and
literature that deal with bereavement, seduction, Holocaust survival, exile,
migration and second generation transmitted trauma and examine whether
they do function as mediums of transportation.’
Pollock suggests that there is a need to move beyond the phallic model of
trauma of either/or, present/absent and contemplate a passage from it that
does not pretend to encapsulate it as a closed past, a memory through
representation and narrative.
But then how do we explain the constant and ongoing production of films,
literature and other allied representations of historical traumatic events? If the
event has become a closed chapter a past memory, how is it that it is re-
visited time and again?
4
As a conceptualisation of the feminine, the Matrix does not oppose the Phallus. It supplements the
necessary work performed by the Phallus as signifier, expanding the range of processes and
dimensions that constitute human subjectivity. (Pollock, Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing in the Era of Trauma,
2010)
30
The answer to this is also provided (in a way) by Pollock herself. She says
that in order to move away from the Phallic model of trauma there is a need to
theorize a dimension that involves an understanding of human subjectivity
that yearns for encounter, a subjectivity that feels able to share and thus
process traumatic remnants of the unknown other as an ongoing process, to
live alongside/with the residue of trauma. This characteristic she connects to
the Matrixial Shift proposed by Ettinger. Pollock employs this feminist model
of interpretation of trauma to examine the works of artists like Chantel
Akerman, Louise Bourgeois and Vera Frenkel.
Pollock’s reason might be the search for a different model of interpretation but
the desire for encounter/re-encounter of the human subjectivity, in order to
process and share traumatic remains is perhaps a basic instinct of the human
psyche’s need to search for meaning, to derive meaning for its existence and
for that an understanding of events/happenings that lead or have led in the
past to non-existence –mass killings and genocide - could become important.
4.2 Trauma, remembering and the 1947 Partition
The horrors of the two world wars and the holocaust according to
Radstone have created ‘post-holocaust’ remembrance that is freighted with
both ‘irretrievable memories of the untold dead and with the unspeakable.’
The Holocaust is perhaps one the most documented cataclysmic events of
the 20th century. Even today, the presence of the Holocaust can be felt vividly
through images, films and literature that circulate within popular media. It is
almost as if we are afraid to put the memory to rest and in the process seem
to constantly relive the horror.
31
A parallel of the holocaust can be traced to the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition
and the riots that followed in its aftermath. Post-Partition India has witnessed
a proliferation of literature, art and film that extensively, and at times,
graphically talk about the atrocities of the communal riots and the rampage
that followed in the wake of the India-Pakistan divide. Like survivors, (of the
partition) who have lived to tell the gruesome tales and have transmitted their
memories to their ‘next generation’, art, film and literature produced on the
subject also play a significant role in the transmission of memories of one
generation to another. I witnessed this personally during a research survey
conducted in Old Delhi where I met with a number of second generation
survivors of the Partition. The survivors’ accounts of the riots and killings,
although dimmed with age were compelling; what was interesting was that
they were backed quite vociferously by their children and grandchildren, who
were not present during the events that were being narrated.
Besides the production of art and literature on the subject, there is also a
conscious effort being made to document and archive the Partition. The 1947
partition archive is a project that is “committed to preserving this chapter of
our collective history.”The aim of the project is to gather stories from survivors
and their children through interviews. It describes itself as “a people’s history”
of that wrenching time. Most of the stories are from those still living in India,
Pakistan or Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until 1971.
“Some of those interviewed have never told their stories before, not even to
their families. A Zoroastrian woman from Karachi recalls how her grandmother
hid her Hindu maid from family members who wanted to convert her against
32
her will. A Hindu man from a village near Lahore recalls surviving the train
journey to India only because a Muslim man, a stranger, hid him in his first-
class compartment; other Hindus on that same train were killed or wounded.
A Muslim man from what is now Indian Punjab describes watching a mob stab
his mother as she tried to protect her older son.” (Sengupta, 2013)
Indian Feminist and author Urvashi Butalia’s book, The Other Side of Silence:
Voices From the Partition of India, documents narratives and testimonies of
women, children, ’Dalits’ and other marginal voices that have never been
heard before. Talking about her experience of researching for the book,
Butalia says, “All of this seemed to emphasize that Partition could not so
easily be put away, that its deep, personal meanings, its profound sense of
rupture, the differences it engendered or strengthened, still lived on in so
many people's lives. I began to realize that Partition was surely more than just
a political divide, or a division of properties, of assets and liabilities. It was
also, to use a phrase that survivors use repeatedly, a `division of hearts'.”
(Butalia, 1998)
The book documents several stories, some offering reconciliation like that of a
mother and daughter separated in the violence of Partition but who then found
each other fifty years later through the agency of a news magazine. While
some others, like that of a father whose thirteen-year-old daughter was
abducted from Pakistan and never found only leave you with questions of
what might have happened, an unease of ‘not knowing’.
33
4.3 Trauma and representation
In her essay Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing in the Era of Trauma, Art
Historian Griselda Pollock says that traumatic events are without historical
precedent and this makes it difficult to represent them through known
conventions of representation. These events according to Pollock “fall outside
the existing terms, words, concepts, images representations which we might
use to make sense of them.” (Pollock, Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing in the Era of
Trauma, 2010)
Yet, artists, writers and film makers, time and again, have tried to re-create
traumatic events of the past (historical or otherwise) through their practice. In
Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Sa`adat Hassan Manto’s short stories -
Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do, Thanda Gosht and Urvashi Butalia’s The Other
Side of Silence, the brutality of acts that followed in the wake of the Partition
are brought to life with graphic vividness. Scenes described in these novels
are no doubt infused with the traces of the authors’ personal experiences but
as works of fiction these texts do not proclaim to document reality. However,
in the case of Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence, a documentation of
interviews conducted over a decade, the premise of the book is based in life
and perhaps, it is this very fact that makes it hard to ignore the stories it tells.
Although written as a narrative, the claim to having knowledge of what truly
transpired, brings into play subjectivity that may or may not be involved while
reviewing a work of fiction.
34
When it comes to film or television, the impact of the medium is perhaps
stronger, owing to its inherent nature; being an audio-visual medium, the
‘likeness to life’ can be compelling for viewers. Films like Deepa Mehta’s Earth
and television serials like Govind Nilhani’s Tamas (an adaptation of Bhisham
Sahni's acclaimed Hindi novel of the same name), have forever crystallized
certain images as reality in our collective memories. In his essay Encoding,
Decoding, Stuart Hall gives a theoretical account of how messages are
produced and disseminated, with particular reference to television. Citing
Umberto Eco, Hall says, “Eco has argued that iconic signs 5'look like objects in
the real world because they reproduce the conditions of perception in the
viewer[...] This is as true of the photographic or televisual 6 image as it is of
any other sign. Iconic signs are, however, particularly vulnerable to being
'read' as natural because visual codes of perception are very widely
distributed and because this type of sign is less arbitrary than a linguistic
sign.”
5
According to C.S Pierce the icon is classed among those signs which present an object with a
likenessthat they themselves possess. He says that a signmay serve as a sign simply because it
happens to represent the object whereas “an icon is of the nature of an appearance, and as such,
strictly speaking, exists only in consciousness although for convenience in ordinary parlance and when
extreme precision is not required we extend the term icon to the outward objects which excite in
consciousness the image itself.” Consequently, the term “icon” is applied by pierce both to external
things – photos, pictures, sculptures and to mental images.
6
The televisual sign is a complex one. It is itself constituted by the combination of two types of
discourse, visual and aural. Moreover, it is an iconic sign, in Peirce's terminology, because 'it
possesses some of the properties of the thing represented'.
35
4.4 Trauma, Art and Postmemory
The very idea of representation of traumatic events is perhaps
questionable because if trauma eludes grasp and assimilation then how can
one represent it? According to artist and critic Bracha Ettinger, the
overwhelming nature of historical and contemporary realities demand a
different kind of attention and press art to create new forms, new ways of
imaging so that we can ultimately also speak of them.
Representation of trauma in art has a number of facets attached to it.
Representation here may be viewed as a prism that refracts the subject (of
trauma) into different aspects. Without the prism, the subject does not change
but the attached faces are no longer visible.
A scholar of Judaic Studies and the Holocaust Yaffa Eliach, is probably best
known for creating the “Tower of Faces” at the US Holocaust
Museum in Washington, D.C.
Yaffa Eliach and her family had escaped the exterminations in Ejszyszki and
survived in hiding. Yet when they returned to Ejszyszki in 1944, Yaffa’s
mother along with twenty-nine other surviving Jews was killed. Yaffa escaped
with photos hidden in her shoes and strapped to her brother's body. Later, she
assembled the six-thousand picture archive “tower” composed of the pictures
that her compatriots had sent to relatives around the world or had saved in
numerous unbelievable ways. According to Marianne Hirsch, the particular
mixture of mourning and re-creation that characterizes the work of post-
memory is nowhere more visible than in the "Tower of Faces”. The
photographs used are ordinary portraits of individuals and groups, of family
36
and group rituals, of candid moments and represent the typical Jewish prewar
life of the town. These pictures do not emerge from a narrow historical
moment, but span a thirty-year period.
“The pictures in the Tower of Faces tell us the immediacy of life at the
moment photographed, transformed in the instant of this recognition into the
death that we know soon followed (the extermination of the Jews in
Ejszyszki).” (Hirsch, Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile, 2012)
Hirsch says that by using the most conventional of photographic genres,
family pictures, with its characteristically affiliative gaze, the tower preserves
power of commemoration into the generations of Postmemory. The
architecture itself figures the nature of Postmemory.
“Standing in the tower we stand, literally, both inside a photo album and inside
a tomb in the shape of a chimney. [...] The Tower of Faces has forged a form
to contain the contradictory shapes of Postmemories of exile and survival.”
(Hirsch, Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile, 2012)
French artist Boltanski grew up after the Holocaust. Bolantski’s father was
born a Polish Jew who had converted to Catholicism and his mother was
Catholic, and although he avoided referring to his Jewish identity in his initial
works, according to Marianne Hirsch, Boltanski's paternal history had
undoubtedly shaped his avant-garde photographic career.
In the mid-1980s, Boltanski undertook a series of installations grouped under
the general title "Lessons of Darkness," The series of installations began with
"Monuments: The Children of Dijon" and "Odessa Monument". These
37
installations were structures built out of numerous re-photographed faces of
his school picture and a school picture from Dijon. The photos were mounted
on walls with individual lights or sat on tin boxes within tin frames that were
connected by electrical cords providing the lighting. According to Hirsch, it
was at this point that Boltanski confronted directly his own Postmemory of
Holocaust, exile, and survival. She says that although the actual children
depicted were possibly still alive, their images formed altarpieces, reminiscent
of Byzantine icons commemorating the dead.
“Through iconic and symbolic, but not directly indexical implication, Boltanski
connects these images of children to the mass murders of the Holocaust: the
pictures themselves evoke and represent the actual victims, but neither we
nor the artist have a way of knowing whether the individuals in the photos are
Holocaust victims or random schoolchildren. Through their lack of specificity,
they represent even more forcefully Boltanski's search for a post-Holocaust
aesthetic that would contain his generation's absent memory shaped by loss
and mourning.” (Hirsch, Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile, 2012)
The trauma of the India Partition has been depicted by artists in the course of
their practice. Nalini Malani, Supriyo Sen, Hema Upadhyay and Reena
Saini Kallat are some of the artists, who through their artistic practice, have
attempted to revisit the site of a trauma that is past.
Keeping in view the purpose of this dissertation, I will present Nalini Malini’s In
search for vanished blood as my first case study.
38
Plate 1. Serial Tamas, Govind Nilhani, 1986.
Plate 2. Film Earth, Deepa Mehta, 1998.
39
Plate 3. Installation Lessons of Darkness, Plate 4. Linien Strasse 137, Slide Projection of
Christian Boltanski, Mid 1980s Police Raid on Former Jewish Residents,
Berlin, Shimon Attie. 1991
Plate 5. Installation Lessons of Darkness, Odessa

monument, Christian Boltanski, 1989-2003
40
Plate 6. Tower of faces, Yaffa Eliach, Shtetl Collection, US
Plate 7. Image from the Tower of faces, Yaffa Eliach, Shtetl Collection, US
41
1. Plate 8. Light leaks, winds meet where the waters spill deceit, Reena
Saini Kallat, metal, sacred thread, fly zapper with UV fluorescent
tubes and electrified grid 85 x 173 x 20 in, 2008-2010
Plate 9. Documentary film Abar Ashibo Phire ,Supriyo Sen, 2003
42
4.5 Nalini Malani - In search for Vanished Blood
Nalini Malani’s artistic oeuvre is dominated by her experiences as a
refugee of the Partition. She places inherited iconographies and cherished
cultural stereotypes under pressure. (Malani)
Time and again, Malani has tried to re-create through her art the trauma of the
1947 Partition. Her 1998 video installation, Remembering Toba Tek Singh,
Inspired by Sa`adat Hassan Manto’s short story of the same name, traces the
painful, horrific and absurd journey of violence beginning with the splitting of
India into two countries, India and Pakistan. The installation works as a video
triptych. Two videos depicting two women face each other across the expanse
of a room that has tin trunks containing monitors and bedding placed in a grid
formation.
“These are the kind of trunks that were used by the refugees to carry all their
worldly possessions. The images on the monitors in the trunks depict people
torn away from their homelands, crossing borders, rioting and suffering. Much
of this archival video imagery was sourced from several countries. This
installation presents the cleaving of countries and the irrational, inhuman use
of technology.” (Malani)
In his essay ‘Apocalypse Recalled: the Recent Work of Nalini Malani, art
historian Chaitanya Sambrani explains that the energy in Malani’s work
operates through the “unreliable” and highly porous nature of memory,
personal as well as collective.
“Nalini’s practice from the point of Toba Tek Singh creates a liminal
43
environment in which the viewer’s own memories are triggered and emerge to
engage with the work. Her commanding play of light and the intensity of the
imagery whether subtle or blatant (or both) together with the ‘glow’ created
from video projections, combine to create an atmosphere that impacts on the
viewer’s triggered memories, engaging the senses, feelings and emotions.
The viewer’s memories and associations connect with the constant
movement of revolving Mylar cylinders in works such as The Tables Have
Turned (2008) and the looping of video again in the work Remembering Toba
Tek Singh, providing a sense of timelessness or an experience of going on
being.” (Dean, 2011)
The affective quality in an artwork suffused with the creators own memories
can perhaps be cited in the case of Malani. In her book Empathic Vision,
Professor Jill Bennett explains art as a visual language of trauma. Professor
Bennett draws on the works of Gilles Deleuze to focus on the specifics of
visual art and asks the question, ‘what is art’s role in generating a way of
thinking and feeling about the subject (of trauma)?’
For Bennett, the question of trauma in art is not about the artwork itself – one
that has been created by a trauma survivor or that about the incident– her
interest lies in the affective operations of art. For her it is this affective
operation of art that propels one into thinking. The emotions produced by
affective art are what Bennett seeks to describe in her book.
“If art purports to register the true experience of violence or devastating loss -
to be about a particular event - then it lays claim to an experience that is
fundamentally owned by someone. Moreover, it invites a wider audience to
44
partake of this experience in some way.” (Bennett, 2005)
According to Bennett, contemporary art does not strive to capture the lived
experience of trauma in characters that one can readily identify with. In the
case of Malani’s works that may be true to some extent but it not entirely. The
women in Malani’s Remembering Toba Tek Singh as well as Mother India
depict women, who according to the Malani are the metaphorical
representation of the land that is divided. Malani plays this imagery on two
levels where the women represent a divided land and also become the ‘face’
for all women whose sufferings and hardships have gone unaccounted due to
the divide. In either case, it is probably safe to say that as audiences, one can
identify (albeit not instantaneously) with the characters.
Bennett goes on to say that “It (trauma related art) often touches us, but it
does not necessarily communicate the “secret” of personal experience. To
understand its transactive nature, we need to examine how affect is produced
within and through a work, and how it might be experienced by an audience
coming to the work.” (Bennett, 2005)
Nalini Malani’s In Search for Vanished Blood draws on the history of culture,
her direct experience as a refugee of the Partition and the legacy of
colonialism and de-colonization. Here, Malani presents a highly personalized
narrative in the form of an installation that is colossal in size with layers of
imagery and audio that requires the viewer to invest time in order to move
through, observe and absorb.
In Search of Vanished Blood takes its title from the 1965 Urdu poem ‘Lahu Ka
Surag’ and is inspired by the 1984 novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf and the
45
1910 book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.
(Lelong, 2013)
These texts along with mythology and actual historical events form the basis
for much of the content of Malani’s work. Floating, intimidating forms of
dinosaurs, under water animals juxtaposed along with Kali, the Indian
goddess of destruction and bloody human figures, urban skylines, ecological
disasters, women and a bandaged female head on which the lines from the
poem are projected, are some of the images that swirl around the viewer,
mixing myth with everyday world. The effect in totality is intuitive, primeval and
one that the viewer cannot escape easily. I use the word escape here to
emphasise on the affect that such an artwork can produce/produces.
“The video projections filter across five suspended, rotating Mylar cylinders
featuring reverse painted imagery of both Hindu and Western icons to create
a shadow play in In search of vanished blood. As the cylinders revolve on
motorized mounts, images move at different speeds on the walls, like a frieze
of moving images, crossing one another in shifting scale and fleeting clarity.
Like fast paced theater in the round, gaining a visual grasp on the whole
eludes the viewer.” (Lelong, 2013)
In Empathic Vision, Bennett says that affect, properly conjured up, produces a
real-time somatic experience, no longer framed as representation. Which
begs the question, how does one conjure affect in art?
According to Bennett, “in an almost concrete sense, much visual and
performance art evoke the possibility - for both artist and viewer – of “being a
spectator of one’s own feelings.”
46
In her book, Bennett speaks of two distinct types of memory – ‘common
memory’ and ‘sense memory’. Common memory is the language that allows
for the easy translation and understanding of traumatic memory. Sense
memory is what registers the physical imprint of the event. The sense memory
is what divides the experience of trauma for the subject into two – the self that
underwent trauma at the time and the self that is now, away from the event.
Sense memory, as a source of art, allows one to feel the truth rather than
think it and registers the pain of a memory as it was directly experienced, thus
communicating a level of bodily affect.
In order to understand the nature of these affects, we need a form of imagery
that originates from a framework that sees the trauma as a ‘lived experience’
instead of treating it as a past event, something that is proposed by Pollock as
well. (See 4.1) Re-witnessing the site of the Partition and its continuing
aftermath as Malani sees it – neo-capitalism, changing urban landscape,
rampant natural ore mining and nuclear testing – creates the ‘lived
experience’ of the event itself.
4.6 Inference
The affect producing quality of In search for vanished blood perhaps
can be attributed largely to the shadow-play that Malani creates via the Mylar
cylinders. In his talk The Shadow-play as Medium of Memory in Global Art (at
a conference at Columbia University) Professor Andreas Huyssen said,
“Malani’s Mylar cylinder installations permit the observer to move freely in a
space of multiple projections and objects and to tryout different perspectives,
even to become part of the shadow-play itself.” (Huyssen, 2012)
47
At this point, I would like to reiterate Marianne Hirsch’s concept of
Postmemory, which she defines as identification with the victim or witness of
trauma, modulated by the unbridgeable distance that separates the participant
from the one born after. She further explains that although familial inheritance
offers the clearest model for Postmemory, it need not be strictly an identity
position. Instead, she prefers to see it as an “inter-subjective trans-
generational space of remembrance, linked specifically to cultural or collective
trauma.” (Hirsch, 2001)
Citing Geoffrey Hartmann’s writing about “witnesses by adoption” she states
that the term’s implication of connection to and enlargement of family is what
she sees as a possibility for Postmemory as well. By adopting the traumatic
experiences (in this case that represented through an artwork) and in the
process also the memories of others as experiences that one might have had
themselves, one can possibly, inscribe them into one’s own life story.
“The notion of Postmemory derives from the recognition of the belated nature
of traumatic memory itself.” (Hirsch, 2001) Citing Cathy Caruth’s suggestion
that trauma is an encounter with another, an act of telling and listening, Hirsch
says that trauma may also be a way of seeing through another’s eyes, of
remembering another’s memories through the experience of their affects.
Perhaps, this association, of witnessing by adoption that may take place
through an artwork’s affective quality can lead to possible Postmemorial
transmission.
48
Plate 10.Remembering Toba Tek Singh, Nalini Malani, Video Installation,
20 minutes looped, sound, 1998-99
Plate 11. Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, Nalini

Malani, Video Installation , 5 Projections, 5 1/2 mins, 2005
Plate 12. In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 Channel Video/

Shadow Play, with 5 rotating reverse painted Mylar cylinders, Sound, 11
minutes, 2012
49
2012
Plate 13. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 Channel
Video/ Shadow Play, with 5 rotating reverse painted Mylar cylinders,
Sound, 11 minutes, 2012
2012

2012

50
2012
2012

2012
51
4.7 Vishwajyoti Ghosh - Restorying the Partition: This Side, That Side.
The second case study of this dissertation is artist and curator
Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s graphic novel, Restorying the Partition: This Side, That
Side. Collaboration across borders – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – it
brings together 47 writers and artists who together have created 28 graphic
accounts and explorations. According to curator Vishwajyoti Ghosh, the
objective of the anthology was to ‘listen to the subsequent generations and
the grandchildren and how they have negotiated maps that never got drawn’.
(Sinha, 2013)
The narratives in the anthology are creative explorations of those who may
not have witnessed the partition, but who continue, till date, to negotiate its
legacy.
“There are some interesting constructs in these. One is memory - what
people left behind.” (Ghosh, 2013)
The anthology uses the trope of a graphic novel. Suffused with a rich and
varied visual lexicon, This side, That side tells the stories of partition survivors
in a manner that has not yet been explored. It combines a number of
elements – stylized cartooning, photography, reportage, essay, poetry, fiction
and adaptations of multimedia art. The other distinctive aspect is that it traces
the partition not as the political history of a nation but as the personal histories
of its people – their stories and memories.
Although cartooning, especially political, has its own place in the vast arena
of storytelling, how effective can such a device be when it comes to narrating
52
stories of an incident that usually brings to mind graphic imagery of horror and
trauma?
Ghosh himself faced these questions while trying to reach out to writers and
artists for the anthology. Ghosh was amply clear that the idea was not to
focus only on what happened back then but also on how subsequent
generations have negotiated it. “The Partition is something we have all grown
up with - if not from our own families, then from literatures and reportage. But
the idea here was to explore private partitions.” (Ghosh, 2013)
The reason that I include this anthology as a part of my dissertation is its
alternative mode of visual representation of a traumatic event like partition.
The book does not delve into a graphic depiction of the partition or its
aftermath but through the stories of the various protagonists it nevertheless
brings to the fore a trauma that has mostly been felt and perhaps continue to
be felt by the survivors. But the question that needs to be asked here is
whether we, as an audience/viewer/reader of the book, are affected?
Here I refer to the original premise of the dissertation, the concept of
Postmemory, which speaks of identification with the victim or witness of
trauma. Are we able to identify with these characters/victims? Do we
experience the lived experience of the protagonists? revisit their site of
trauma? As opposed to Malani’s larger than life installation In search for
vanished blood that draws the viewer into its world does this book generate
an equally affective viewing experience? And if it does, then does it also allow
Postmemorial transmission?
53
It is interesting to note that Marianne Hirsch cites Art Spiegelman’s Maus
(also a graphic novel) as that which first elicited her need for a term to
describe the particular form of belated or inherited memory found in
Spiegelman’s work.
Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. It depicts
Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish
Jew and Holocaust survivor. Maus has been described as memoir, biography,
history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. (Wikipedia)
Hirsch says, “In Maus, we have a father's memories and they're very much
his, and then we have the son intruding on that, and coming close to
appropriating some of the stories, and there's the ethical questioning of how to
do that and what should go into the book and not go into the book. He takes
the father's testimony and puts it into these caption bubbles, so, by necessity,
you don’t get the whole story; you only get the son's own selection. Here the
family narrative becomes fair game, and the Holocaust survivor is someone
you can argue with.” (Hirsch, disClosure Interviews Marianne Hirsch. Intimacy
across the Generations: Memory, Postmemory, and Representation, 2006)
According to Hirsch, photography’s promise to offer an access to the event
itself, and its easy assumption of iconic and symbolic power, makes it a
uniquely powerful medium for the transmission of events that remain
unimaginable, which is why it is a crucial element in her conception of
Postmemory. Even though Hirsch favours the photographic medium as
central to the idea of Postmemory, she considers Speigleman’s drawings In
Maus, which are modelled on photographs of the past, of equal import. In the
54
case of This side, That Side photographs have been used in some of the
stories like 90 upper mall, I want to be a tree, Welcome to Geneva camp and
the last circus. The drawings modelled on photographs and the deliberate
suggestion of original photo under the drawing layer in Maus functions as a
referent for the viewer. The gates of the concentration camp create an instant
connection in the viewers mind with the Holocaust. Such use of iconic
imagery is also evident in This side, That Side. The appearance of a white-
bearded figure at the end of Fault Lines forms an immediate connection (for
all familiar with the history of the countries in question) with Rabindranath
Tagore. Other symbolic images like the flags of the nations, the land between
two Flag poles, silhouettes of religious edifices, barbed wire fences, the HMV
logo as well as script - Bangla and Urdu, all these create/re-create strong
associations for the viewers that harks back to a time before the division. The
layered text – of imagery and script - creates a necessity to look and read.
Much like Maus, there is a mediation of past and present that takes place in
the narratives of This Side, That Side. Also, the use of text – dialogues as well
as that incorporated in the artwork itself creates another dimension to this
work as opposed to Malani’s In search for vanished blood. The anthology
consciously situates past memories into the present, thereby creating a kind
of lived experience and not a memory that has been laid to rest in the past.
However, this is not the case with every story in the anthology. While stories
like Exit plan, Noor miyan, which side? and A good education, clearly tell of a
time that has passed, few others like A letter from India, 90 upper mall,
Tamasha-e-tetwal and The News, appear to be happening or could happen
now. Then there are others like An old fable and Cabaret Weimar that seem
55
to be a commentary on the current socio-political situation in the three
countries.
4.8 Inference
There is a constant negotiation that takes place in these stories (via
text and image) A similar negotiation, perhaps, also plays out between the
reader/viewer of the text as he or she interacts with it. According to Jill
Bennett, it is this capacity of an artwork, to not close off the past that can
produce affect. Affect is a bodily response. It is a non-conscious experience of
intensity. According to Antonio Damasio without affect feelings do not “feel”
because they have no intensity. Affect, in a way, determines relationships
between us, the environment and others. Although art can generate affect, it
is not a direct transmission. It is a resonance that one body feels with another,
virtual or otherwise. Affective resonance is independent of meaning and
content, which means that it has less to do with our thinking process and
more to do with instinctual ‘feelings’.
This is where lies the difference between Malani’s In search for vanished
blood and This Side, That Side. Although, both works relay effective
narratives of the traumatic past, it is perhaps the difference between the two
mediums (of the works - multimedia installation and graphic novel) that
creates a difference when it comes to stirring affective response in the viewer.
The scale and three dimensionality of Malani’s work draws the viewer into a
space that is removed from the outside world. The possibility of complete
absorption in the work is higher due to the fact that it recreates a separate
space in lived environment. The cognitive faculty does not have to perform the
56
act of thinking of the ‘space’ as it is already present. In the case of the graphic
novel, the reader/viewer constantly engages with the work, reads it, views it
and then makes associations. It is less instinctual as compared to the
installation. The very medium of the novel can create a distance between the
viewer and the characters, unlike an interactive artwork, here the
reader/viewer cannot physically entre the space of the work. This distance
can cause difficulty in witnessing by adoption. Even if such an interaction
does transpire, it is usually limited to the time period of interaction and may
not last beyond that. There is a sense of affiliation, at best sympathy or
empathy that one feels for/with the characters but not affect.
So, although there is a transmission of memories, even the pain and sadness
of the characters that populate the pages of This Side, That Side, it would
perhaps be inaccurate to call these Postmemories.
57
Plate 18. Restorying Partition: This side, That
side, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
Plate 19. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, An Old

Fable, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
Plate 20. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Border,

58
Plate 21. Restorying Partition: This side, That side,
Tamasha-e-Tetwal, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
Plate 22. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, An Afterlife,

Plate 23. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Fault

Lines, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, 2013
59
Plate 24. Restorying Partition: This side, That side,
60
CONCLUSION
This dissertation began with the investigation of the question ‘can and
does an artwork become a device for transmission of Postmemory?’
The primary concern was followed by secondary questions of why do we
choose to relive memories of trauma through visual, written and other media?
How should one view art or text that is created by the ‘next generation’,
depicting the said event based on ‘inherited’ memories?
For the purpose of this study, art created by artists of Indian origin, currently
practicing within the Indian contemporary art scenario (even though they
might have started their practice at an earlier time) was undertaken. The
dissertation took root in a generalized concept of memory as a personal
space, how we interpret, reinterpret and then archive information and
incidents in our daily lives as memories. The initial research process yielded a
vast amount of new data that opened up the research question to a wider
range of interpretations. By using different approaches, which do not
exclusively come under the purview of memory studies like Affect Theory and
Trauma Theory, a new framework for the purpose of examination of the case
studies was formed.
Being a qualitative analysis, it is perhaps difficult to answer the questions
raised in black and white terms. The Interpretations arrived at in this study are
possibly a set of probabilities out of many.
61
A vital idea that surfaced during this study was the importance of the affective
quality of an artwork, especially with reference to art dealing with trauma.
Affect is a bodily response. Affect facilitates a non-conscious experience of
intensity. It determines the relationships between us, the environment and
others. Although art can generate affect, it is not a direct transmission. It is a
resonance that one body feels with another, virtual or otherwise. Affective
resonance is independent of meaning and content, which means that it has
less to do with our thinking process and more to do with instinctual ‘feelings’.
Although both artworks discussed in this study relay effective narratives of a
traumatic past, it is perhaps the difference between the two mediums (of the
works - multimedia installation and graphic novel) that creates the difference
when it comes to stirring affective response in the viewer.
In the case of Malani’s In search of vanished blood, the affect producing
quality of the work can perhaps be attributed largely to the shadow-play that
Malani creates via the Mylar cylinders and projected reverse paintings and
this is what Professor Andreas Huyssen says permits the observer to move
freely in a space of multiple projections and objects and to tryout different
perspectives, even to become part of the shadow-play itself. Clearly, the
medium here plays a vital role in producing affect.
The scale of the installation as well seems to play a crucial part in engaging
the observer. It captures the viewer in a space that is outside his own space-
time experience. The possibility of complete absorption in the work is higher
due to the fact that it recreates a separate space within a live environment.
This perhaps allows the viewers to adopt the traumatic experiences (in this
62
case that represented through an artwork) and in the process also the
memories of others as experiences that one might have had themselves.
There seems to generate the possibility of ‘witnessing by adoption’.
In the case of Ghosh’ This side, That side, the reader/viewer constantly
engages with the work, reads it, views it and then makes associations. It is
less instinctual as compared to the installation. An interaction does take place
between the reader/viewer of the text but given the medium, a graphic novel;
there is a distance that always remains between the viewer and the
characters. Here the reader/viewer cannot physically entre the space of the
work. This distance may cause difficulty in ‘witnessing by adoption’. There
may be a sense of affiliation, at best sympathy or empathy that one feels
for/with the characters but not affect.
The idea of ‘witnessing by adoption’ is close to Hirsch’s observation of trauma
as a way of seeing through another’s eyes, of remembering another’s
memories through the experience of their affects. Perhaps, it is this
association of witnessing by adoption that could lead to possible
Postmemorial transmission.
Using poststructuralist critiques, this study has concentrated on the idea of
Postmemorial transmission in artworks exploring trauma that is personalized.
The artists in their works have explored memories of trauma that they have
formed via direct or indirect interaction with the traumatic event depicted.
There is a possibility here to extend this study of Postmemorial transmission
to artworks that deal with collective trauma where the artist is not directly
involved or effected but chooses to depict it in his work. For example, artists
63
who work with issues of man-made calamities or migration and dislocation
can also be studied under the lens of Postmemory.
64
FURTHER SCOPE
Building on the observations stated in the conclusion, an examination
of Postmemorial transmission in the art of Diaspora artists and artists who
work with social causes can also be conducted.
Artist and activist Samar Singh Jodha’s Bhopal: A silent picture is an
installation that talks about the Bhopal gas tragedy that killed thousands of
men, women and children overnight. Art representing and discussing
collective trauma of this nature can also be studied to understand its affective
quality and ability to transmit Postmemories.
Many Diaspora artists seek out their origins via their artistic practice. Stories
of moving home or away from the ‘homeland’ are a prominent theme in the
works of a number of these artists. The study could be an examination of how
Diaspora artists mediate the questions of memory, loss and longing through
their art.
65
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6. www.livemint.com
7. www.lenouveleconomiste.fr
8. www.ushmm.org
9. www.arliquido.blogs.sapo
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11. www.thehindu.com
12. www.newindianexpress.com
13. www.cultureunplugged.com
14. www.crabbits.wordpress.com
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16. www.kindlemag.in
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18. www.perchontheweb.com
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20. www.realneo.us
21. www.paddle8.com
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Shabari Choudhury Art As A Device of Post Memory and Trauma

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Shabari Choudhury Art As A Device of Post Memory and Trauma

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Department of Art History and Art Appreciation

Faculty of Fine Arts

This is to certify that Ms. Shabari Choudhury Enrolment No.

dissertation possible. I am thankful to all those people who have contributed

to its completion and I owe my profound gratitude to all of them.

I am sincerely and deeply thankful to my guide, Ms. Mrinal Kulkarni, whose

encouragement, supervision and support from the preliminary to the

concluding level enabled me to complete this dissertation. She has gone

needed. It would have been next to impossible to write this dissertation

without her help and guidance.

unrelenting support during the entire academic year.

whole academic session for better understanding of the subject.

Jamia Millia Islamia for their support.

Lastly, I offer my regards to all of those who supported me in any respect

during the completion of this dissertation.

1.1 Research Question 1

1.2 Research Premise 1

1.3 Personal Motivation 4

1.4 Research Interest 4

1.5 Formulation of the Research Question 6

1.6 scope and Limitation 7

1.7 Outline of the Dissertation 7

LITERATURE REVIEW 10-22

2.1 Memory Study Today 11

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23-26

3.1 Research Method 23

3.2 Area of Interest 24

3.3 Formulation of the Research question 24

POSTMEMORY AND TRAUMA 27-60

4.1 An Understanding of Trauma 27

4.2 Trauma, remembering and the 1947 Partition 31

4.3 Trauma and representation 34

4.4 Trauma, Art and Postmemory 36

4.5 Nalini Malani –In search for Vanished Blood 43

4.7 Vishwajyoti Ghosh –Restorying the Partition: This

side, that side. 52

Plate 1. Serial Tamas, Govind Nilhani, 1986 39

Plate 2. Film Earth, Deepa Mehta, 1998. 39

Plate 3. Installation Lessons of Darkness, Christian Boltanski, 40

Plate 4. Linien Strasse 137, Slide Projection of Police Raid on 40

Plate 5. Installation Lessons of Darkness, Odessa monument, 40

Plate 6. Tower of faces, Yaffa Eliach, Shtetl Collection, US 41

Plate 7. Image from the Tower of faces, Yaffa Eliach, Shtetl 41

Plate 9. Documentary film Abar Ashibo Phire ,Supriyo Sen, 42

Plate 10.Remembering Toba Tek Singh, Nalini Malani, Video 49

Plate 11. Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, 49

Plate 12. In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 Channel 49

Plate 13. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 50

Plate 14. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 50

Plate 15. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 50

Plate 16. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 51

Plate 17. Detail, In Search of Vanished Blood, Nalini Malani, 6 51

Plate 18. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Vishwajyoti 58

Plate 19. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, An Old 58

Plate 20. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Border, 58

Plate 21. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Tamasha-e- 59

Plate 22. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, An Afterlife, 59

Plate 24. Restorying Partition: This side, That side, Vishwajyoti 60

This chapter delineates reasons responsible for the undertaking of this

experiences of growing up as a second generation migrant.

on the memories (specifically of trauma) of the creator to the viewer and do

these transmitted memories get absorbed by the viewers as their own