Analyzing the ‘abject’: A negotiation through extremism and subalternity in Amitava Kumar’s Husband of a Fanatic

Authors

  • Ajit Anand Indian Institute of Technology
  • Priyanka Tripathi Indian Institute of Technology

Keywords:

Abject, Communal Violence, Gujarat riots, Extremism, Subalternity

Abstract

The inter-communal violence that happened in the Western state of Gujarat in 2002 has been one of the deadliest communal violence happened in post-millennia India. Amitava Kumar’s political novel Husband of a Fanatic (2004), delineates the lives of survivors living in the government relief camps in the aftermath of communal violence. The paper argues that through the employment of grotesque images and figures in the narratives, the author manages to draw horror and revulsion to the readers wherein these figures construe as ‘abject’ (Ilott 2014, 664). Drawing upon the theory of ‘abjection’ by Julia Kristeva (1980), the paper analyzes the figures of abjection employed in the narratives of the novel that crudely depicts the survivor’s physical viscera and camp life in the aftermath of the violence. Furthermore, the paper analyzes how the sufferings and trauma caused by the communal violence opens up the debate on extremism and subalternity in the novel. Through the close reading methodology, the article provides a fresh analysis into the postcolonial literary trajectories of abjection, extremism and subalternity.

Author Biographies

Ajit Anand, Indian Institute of Technology

Indian Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, Patna, India

Priyanka Tripathi, Indian Institute of Technology

Indian Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, Patna, India

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Published

2021-11-28

Issue

Section

Studies & Articles