Author:

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Soham Adhikari.

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Abstract:

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This paper discusses how postmemory becomes a liminal space in itself, giving birth to hyphenated identities who oscillate within the realms of this liminality. Liminal spaces are situated in the transformative bisection of the before and the after. Studying the liminal space where true memory is forgotten and a new-fangled postmemory is generated gives an insight into the minds and patterns of the collective subject. Oftentimes, such an act of forgetfulness may be forced upon the collective subject. Governments alter memory narratives, completely erasing or exponentially disfiguring them to meet their agenda. Even the hyphenated collective subject itself indulges in self-imposed forgetfulness to nullify the traumatic experiences it faces, or once faced. It willingly otherises that which it possesses, consequently romanticizing that which it lacks. During both the Indian partition and the Bangladeshi genocide, millions of refugees flooded into India. Their progenies who grew up in India were treated with promises and visions of a utopian land beyond the borders – a land from which they had had to flee. These second generation immigrants faced “a dramatic loss of identity and meaning” because of the cultural trauma they encountered through postmemory narratives. Stuck within this chaotic liminal space, they were forced to acknowledge both the romanticized identity that was being imposed upon them and the lacking other that they formed a part of. Narratives of postmemory passed on by the original hyphenated collective subject therefore led to the formation of another hyphenated identity, those forever stuck in a sempiternal liminality.

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This paper was originally presented at the international conference Postmemory and the Contemporary World, and has been accepted for publication in The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies.