Signifying Corporeal-Trauma in Anita Desai's Fictions

Abstract

When verbal testimony becomes an impossibility, the human body, or the “corporeal self' offers voice and lends meaning to untold, silent, and non-representable historical realities, as do traumatic experiences. This essay outlines how Anita Desai's novels circumscribe physicality, offering the scarred and fractured body as a potential testimony of traumatic memories and subsequent experiences, which serve as an agency to cope with the trauma. By re-examining the body-trauma relationship in Anita Desai's selected works, this essay defies the hegemonic Eurocentric trauma discourses that undermine the relevance of local cultures and beliefs in Indian context. The article also focuses on how Anita Desai's novels engage with a particular historical and social milieu to illuminate the relevance of Indian philosophy in healing and recuperation of the suffering body/subject.