Conflict, Trauma, Memory

Socio-political conflicts have historically had a devastating impact on the human psyche, and the trauma one goes through surpasses rational thought and a healthy existence. The memories and experiences of living in a conflict zone are passed down through generations via cultural memory, prompting people to express their suffering through writing. Exploring and analysing conflict-zone literature is essential, as it lends us a real, unfiltered, and humane view of the aftermath of war and the subsequent violence, way more than what the printed pages of newspapers may provide. We are exposed to various stories of atrocities, which help us develop an ‘inner eye’ to understand complex human experiences by humanising conflict. Literature, as a flexible space, gives agency to people directly or indirectly affected by conflict, often challenging society’s dogmatic norms, status quo, and ‘grand narratives’. Studying such literary pieces expands one’s horizon by exposing them to the ground-level humanitarian realities of a warzone, stimulating more balanced and nuanced global viewpoints on justice, peace, and the human predicament.

This book has deliberated on the role of trauma and memory in the conflict narrative of the Northeast and its transgenerational transmission through various shades of ‘memory studies’. Achille Mbembe’s concept of ‘necropolitics’ has been explored to understand the complexities of existence amid violence and bigotry. Additionally, the theories of myth criticism and transnational feminist studies have been considered to understand the role of cultural ideograms and unique female experiences in Northeast India.

The book advocates an egalitarian approach that might give agency to conflict narratives as a part of conflict-zone literature and validate the distinct cultural insignias of a region. The essence of studying conflict literature is validating the complex human problems found in literature as natural and humane.

How important is writing to engage in soul-searching when the whole world shatters in front of one’s eyes, so much so that it no longer makes sense? How purgatorial can one feel while venting out one’s version of a story against what is popularly set as a structured narrative? How difficult does it get to express the hullabaloo from the vulnerable pockets of one’s experiences in a conflict zone, leading a life under the shadow of guns? Do the writers take up their pens only to vent out the suppressed narratives of living in a conflict zone, as their moral duty to safeguard their heritage and ethnic tussle, analogous to how soldiers take up their ‘mighty swords’, or is there more to the story? Writings from conflict zones, instead of fictional portrayals of life in such areas, provide valuable insights into how narratives serve as an existential response to the world and its events.

Literature testifies to the lived experiences of the various nuances of a conflict situation, providing a flexible ground for recognition of the inner soul – a connecting link between facts and fantasy. Furthermore, as Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey (1996) and Terry Eagleton (2006) argue, literature works as an ideology and intends to subvert it.1 Traumatic experiences in conflict zones can lead to the fragmentation and disorientation of the mind, which works differently in different human beings. Sometimes, such memories are evasive, and sometimes, they keep choking like a lump in the throat by coming back as flashbacks, nightmares or shivers down the spine. Further, these memories may not flow like a coherent narrative but reside as disjointed fragments, sometimes with sensory particulars like smells or sounds dominating a clear and concise chain of thoughts. Literary writings not only keep an account of those unique experiences of living in a conflict situation but also map out how traumatic memories of violence, discrimination, and identity crisis can be transmitted across generations through the art of storytelling.

‘Conflict’ typically stems from the inappropriate or incompatibility of ideas involving more than one group; it means a clash of contradictory ideas and ideologies. It is neither a purely philosophical issue nor restricted to political attributes; instead, it is a dynamic phenomenon that undergoes contractions and releases at intervals in any societal structure. This is because absolute peace and uniformity do not exist in practice. Oliver Schwarz et al. (2006: 2), while doing a literature review on the dynamics of conflict, opines that the definition provided by Singer and Small’s Correlates-of-War-Project determines a violent conflict situation, when at least one of the combatant parties is a state, and there are at least 100 battle-deaths. However, the delineation of conflict by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) as ‘… the clashing of interests (positional differences) on national values of some duration and magnitude between at least two parties (organised groups, states, groups of states, organisations) that are determined to pursue their interests and win their cases’ (Qtd in ‘Conflict – A Literature Review’ by Oliver Schwarz et al.) seems to be apt in understanding the rifts created between India and India’s Northeast, which has led to the formation of the latter as a conflict zone for various reasons.

Different philosophers and politicians have defined the workings of conflict in a social milieu differently. According to the traditional Marxists, conflict stems from class differences, with the clash between the owners and non-owners of property. As a corollary to this, Herbert Marcuse proposes that in a market relationship, conflict may exist between the producers and consumers, employers and employees, lenders and borrowers, and so on (Banton, 2011: 394–98). In The Functions of Social Conflict, Lewis Coser (1956: 18) opines that conflict is ‘a fundamental and constructive part of social organisation’. He further says: