The Cartography of Loss: Mapping Memory, Trauma, and Silence in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines deals with the interconnected threads of memory, trauma, and identity in postcolonial South Asia. This research paper, entitled “The Cartography of Loss: Mapping Memory and Trauma in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines”, aims to shed light on how Ghosh creates a metaphorical map of loss where personal and national histories intersect and silences speak louder than words. This paper attempts to show how Ghosh reconfigures our conventional understanding of historical and political cartography by effectively tracing trauma and memory in a post-partition context. This paper also incorporates Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory situating her idea of trauma as an unassimilated event which rejects closure and Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology which deals with the constant presence of absence in the form of the ghosts of unresolved histories and lingering memories. Through an analytical and close reading of The Shadow Lines, the study examines key characters like Tridib, Tha’mma, Ila, and the unnamed narrator who suffer from punctured identities influenced by invisible borders, communal violence and the unexpressed grief.