Font Size:     

This paper undertakes to explore the transmission of transgenerational trauma by means of postmemory in Uzma Aslam Khan’s novel The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali in light of contemporary trauma studies and postcolonial discourse. It draws upon Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory in 1) The Generation of postmemory: writing and visual culture after the Holocaust 2) Family frames: Photography, narrative, and postmemory and Gabriele Schwab’s
concept of transgenerational trauma in Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and
Transgenerational Trauma. This paper, by using the interpretive approach in textual analysis, seeks to follow the trails of trauma experienced by the second generation of political prisoners of Andaman Islands under the British colonial rule in the text. It investigates how transmission of trauma operates in the text through narratives, pictures, objects, places, scars, language, silence and inherited memories. While mapping the trauma pathways of different characters in the text, the present study also focuses on identifying indigenous ways through which transgenerational trauma functions within a postcolonial geography. The study calls attention to the multitude of effects of ancestral trauma on the post generations living in a colonial regime. While looking at
the political background of the text, the present paper points out the possibility of constructive political activism within society with the production of postmemorial works of art. By using trauma theory and postmemory under the critical lens of postcolonial discourse, the paper deviates from conventional use of trauma studies which mostly focuses on psychoanalytical interpretations. This
study is an attempt to incorporate a decolonized conception of trauma within contemporary Pakistani trauma paradigm.