Dialogues and dialectics The intersection of space memory and identity in select malayalam fiction

Abstract

Space and memory are key factors that determine, validate, and vindicate one’s existence. The idea of self that one possesses is a carefully constructed one, a product of selective memory and forgetting, which is usually bound by a certain sense of temporality and spatiality. The thesis examines three texts from Malayalam literature — M. Mukundan’s Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil (1974) translated as On the banks of the Mayyazhi by Gita Krishnankutty (1999), N. S. Madhavan’s Lanthanbatheriyile Luthiniyakal (2003) translated as Litanies of Dutch Battery (2010) by Rajesh Rajamohan, and Subhash Chandran’s Manushyanu Oru Aamukham (2010) translated as A Preface to Man (2016) by Fathima E.V. — to study the interface and interconnection between memory, space, and identity of the protagonists and/or narrators, primarily centring on the humanistic, individualistic or existential aspects. Employing a triadic theoretical framework using insights from Spatial Literary Studies, Memory Studies, and the identity-theory developed by Neil Leach, the thesis argues that the protagonists and/or narrators construct their identities as interstitial and dynamic through a dialectics of attachment with and detachment from the spaces of interaction facilitated by memories and memory metaphors that arise on various occasions during their journey across their inhabiting spaces. This peculiar ongoing construction of the self facilitated by memories of varying nature — they vary from text to text - and the state of liminality (Victor Turner’s concept) that the characters arrive at towards the end of the texts - where they emerge as powerless, fragile victims, and tragic personas - grant them agency or a possibility of agency, which challenges and subverts their widely accepted images that the texts and their secondary readings have hitherto provided by offering the reader an opportunity to think beyond the same.