Poetics and politics of post-partition cultural memories in Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography

Abstract

The term ‘cultural memory’ signifies a shared memory of a group of people inhabiting a common geographical location with a mutual understanding of religion, culture, and society. While fiction, non-fiction, and fine arts are used for archiving, reconfiguring, and reflecting on the communal memories that are historically, culturally, and politically significant, artefacts such as paintings and photographs are used to keep accurate historical records. This study argues that Kamila Shamsie’s novel Kartography (2002) is a literary rendition that fictionalises the most relevant collective memories of post-Partition Pakistan by providing a new perspective on resolving the political, ethnic and sectarian issues in a postcolonial community. The textual analysis of the novel, in association with cultural memory theoretical perspectives, reveals that it is a ‘mythistorical’ text that mythologises the history of Pakistan. The characters have been personified and condensed into ethno-racial stereotypes. The city of Karachi has been reconstructed into a literary chronotope, and human relationships have been used as metaphors to revisit the political mistakes of the past. Hence, this text is not only an artistic mimesis of post-Partition Pakistan’s ‘cultural memory’, but also a promulgation of a cultural change required for a more cohesive and peaceful South Asian regional politics.