Women’s Bodies as National Trophies in Cracking India: Stories of Shame and Guilt

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20420/Phil.Can.2023.595

Keywords:

Partition, bodies, affect theory, shame, guilt

Abstract

Cracking India (1991), considered the most remarkable novel by the Pakistani-American writer of Parsi descent Bapsi Sidhwa, focuses on the historical event of the Partition that took place in 1947, which divided the Indian subcontinent into the countries of India and Pakistan. The plot is substantially gynocentric and recounts the horrors of this territorial, political and social conflict and depicts how women were objectified not only from a sexual perspective, but also as trophies of power and humiliation on the enemy side. The aim of this article is to explore the concepts of shame and guilt in power relations, by applying the affect theory from a gender perspective.

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Author Biography

María Luz González-Rodríguez, Universidad de La Laguna

María Luz González-Rodríguez is a tenured professor in the Department of English and German Philology at the Universidad de La Laguna. Her main research interests revolve around Anglo-Canadian and South Asian literature. She has published more than 50 studies on the relationship between literature written by women and their environment and on questions of identity from a psychoanalytic, symbolic, ecocritical and affective perspective, including issues of race, gender, and caste. González-Rodríguez is also coordinator of the Research Group "Literaturas postcoloniales de habla inglesa" at the Universidad de La Laguna, which focuses on studies on India —inside and outside the diaspora—, the United States, Canada, and Singapore.

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Published

2023-05-31

How to Cite

González-Rodríguez, M. L. (2023). Women’s Bodies as National Trophies in Cracking India: Stories of Shame and Guilt. Philologica Canariensia, 29, 175–191. https://doi.org/10.20420/Phil.Can.2023.595

Issue

Vol. 29 (2023)

Section

Miscellany

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Copyright (c) 2023 María Luz González-Rodríguez

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