The forms of history: This Side, That Side, graphic narrative and the partitions of the Indian subcontinent

Abstract

This article examines This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition: Graphic Narratives from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, a 2013 anthology of graphic texts on the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Indian and Pakistan and the 1971 creation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Hillary Chute has argued that politically oriented graphic narratives confront the problem of representing history through an urgent visualizing of historical circumstance that disrupts and realigns the narrative elements. The narration of history is thus disrupted by the use of collage, montage, non-linear image and verbal organization of the page. The current article isolates four specific representational and narrative techniques through which This Side, That Side disrupts the narration of history of the subcontinent’s traumatic partitions.

Keywords:

• Indian partition
• graphic narrative
• history
• trauma
• haptic visuality
• This Side, That Side

Notes

1. I place India in quotation marks because at this point in the tale we are not certain that the refugees will reach India.

2. I use the term “frames” to indicate cultural practices of perception and understanding, as distinct from the “frames” of the comics medium.