International Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (IJLLC)
ISSN: 2582-9823
Vol-5, Issue-3, May-Jun 2025
Journal DOI: 10.22161/ijllc
Article CrossRef DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijllc.5.3.4
Peer-Reviewed Journal
Beyond the Void- Postcolonial Trauma and the
Strategy of Silence in African and South Asian
Literature
Olivia Siby
Independent Scholar
[email protected]
Article Info Abstract
Received: 10 Apr 2025, This paper examines the role of silence and absence as
Received in revised form: 03 May literary strategies in African and South Asian postcolonial
2025, fiction. Focusing on works by Chinua Achebe, Tsitsi
Dangarembga, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Arundhati Roy, and Bapsi
Accepted: 08 May 2025,
Sidhwa, the study demonstrates how these narrative
Available online: 15 May 2025 techniques express trauma, resist colonial discourse, and
Keywords— silence, absence, reassert indigenous epistemologies. Drawing from
postcolonial literature, trauma, postcolonial, trauma, and feminist theories, the analysis
resistance, African fiction, South positions silence not as passivity, but as an active, insurgent
Asian fiction, gender, identity, gesture that reclaims narrative space and complicates the
decolonisation politics of voice and representation.
©2025 The Author(s). Published by AI
Publications. This is an open access
article under the CC BY license
I. INTRODUCTION trauma and resistance in postcolonial African
In the aftermath of colonial conquest, the written and South Asian fiction. Drawing on the theories
word became a critical site for reclaiming of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Cathy
identity, memory, and voice. Postcolonial writers, Caruth, and analysing the works of Chinua
confronting the linguistic and epistemological Achebe, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o,
violence of empire, often turned not only to Arundhati Roy, and Bapsi Sidhwa, this study
speech but also to silence—what remained argues that silence and absence are not narrative
unsaid or unsayable—as a potent aesthetic and voids but deliberate interventions. They confront
political tool. Frequently misinterpreted as colonial discourse, foreground indigenous
markers of powerlessness, silence and absence knowledge systems, and reconfigure narrative
in postcolonial literature instead function as authority, particularly in response to historical
complex forms of resistance, testimony, and and gendered violence.
epistemic reconstruction. Particularly in the The colonial histories of Africa and South Asia
literatures of Africa and South Asia—regions were marked by systemic silencing—through
indelibly marked by European imperialism— cultural erasure, linguistic imposition, and
narratives are shaped by what is withheld, historical revisionism. British rule in both
unspeakable, or obscured. regions introduced foreign education systems,
This paper explores how silence and absence suppressed indigenous languages, and distorted
operate as literary strategies for articulating national narratives. The trauma of Partition in
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India and the repression under authoritarian demonstrates how colonial power imposes
regimes in post-independence Africa further narrative closure while silencing the multiplicity
deepened experiences of psychic and narrative of native experience.
rupture. These legacies inform the texture of Close Reading of- In Nervous Conditions,
postcolonial literature, where silence often serves Dangarembga explores gendered silence through
as a response to unspeakable violence or the character of Nyasha, whose rebellion against
fragmented cultural memory. patriarchal and colonial structures is articulated
Postcolonial theory, particularly Edward Said’s as a physical and psychological breakdown. Her
Orientalism and Spivak’s - anorexia, her silences, and her explosive
“Can the Subaltern Speak?,” critiques how moments of speech are narrative expressions of
colonial discourse rendered colonised subjects trauma that cannot be fully verbalised. Tambu's
voiceless. For Spivak, the subaltern’s silence is silence at crucial narrative junctures marks her
not mere muteness, but a politically charged internalisation of colonial expectations and the
space where voice is mediated, distorted, or difficulty of articulating dissent from within
erased. Homi Bhabha’s notion of hybridity oppressive systems.
further complicates the binaries of voice/silence, Close Reading of- Ngũgĩ’s A Grain of Wheat
suggesting that resistance may emerge from presents silence both as complicity and
linguistic ambivalence itself. resistance. Characters struggle with betrayals
Trauma theory, especially Cathy Caruth’s and moral ambiguities in the Mau Mau uprising,
concept of belatedness, helps articulate how often resorting to silence as a means of coping
traumatic experiences resist linear narration. with guilt or preserving collective memory.
Silence, in this framework, signals the limits of Mugo’s prolonged silence conceals a devastating
language and the persistence of unassimilated truth, but it also reflects the complex
memory. Feminist scholars such as Chandra entanglement of individual agency and national
Talpade Mohanty and Trinh T. Minh-ha offer history.
additional lenses to read silence as gendered, Close Reading of- Roy’s The God of Small Things
shaped by both colonial patriarchy and is structured around silence, especially the
indigenous hierarchies. silence of Ammu and Velutha’s transgressive
This study employs comparative literary analysis love, and the trauma of Estha and Rahel. The
across five Anglophone postcolonial texts: Things narrative repeatedly returns to what cannot be
Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Nervous said: caste, desire, and state violence. The
Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, A Grain of disjointed temporal structure and elliptical
Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, The God of Small narration mirror the fragmented memory and
Things by Arundhati Roy, and Cracking India by trauma of the characters. Silence, in Roy's novel,
Bapsi Sidhwa. These texts were chosen for their is both protective and suffocating.
geographic range and shared engagement with Close Reading of- In Cracking India, Sidhwa
colonial and postcolonial violence. Through close portrays Partition through the eyes of a child
reading, the analysis foregrounds how silences— narrator, whose innocent perspective masks the
whether structural, dialogic, or narrative—reflect horrors unfolding around her. The silences in the
collective trauma, cultural rupture, and text, the things Lenny cannot or does not say,
resistance. point to both the inadequacy of language and the
Close Reading of - In Things Fall Apart, Achebe politics of remembering. Ayah’s abduction and
uses silence as a metaphor for colonial return are surrounded by silences that reflect
disruption. The death of Okonkwo, ending in a both gendered violence and communal trauma.
silence imposed by colonial narration, is a
powerful commentary on the erasure of II. LITERATURE REVIEW
indigenous voice. The District Commissioner’s
The comparative framework highlights thematic
final remarks encapsulate this silencing, as
continuities and regional distinctions. While
Okonkwo’s life is reduced to a footnote in a
African texts tend to foreground anti-colonial
colonial text. Achebe's narrative strategy
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resistance and cultural erasure, South Asian exchange. Such inquiry would broaden the scope
texts focus more on gendered trauma and the of postcolonial silence studies into new ethical
enduring impact of Partition. Yet across both and aesthetic terrains.
contexts, silence and absence emerge as In African and South Asian postcolonial
strategies to resist colonial epistemologies and literature, silence and absence are not narrative
reassert agency. deficits but forms of resistance and
The selected authors write from deeply politicised remembrance. These are deliberate gaps—
positions. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s decision to charged spaces that challenge the certainties of
abandon English in favour of Gikuyu is itself a colonial discourse and make room for the
form of linguistic resistance. Dangarembga’s fragmented, the unspeakable, and the invisible.
fiction, grounded in the experience of Writers like Achebe, Ngũgĩ, Dangarembga, Roy,
Zimbabwean womanhood, critiques both and Sidhwa compel us to listen to what is not
colonialism and patriarchy. Roy’s activism said, to read between the lines of speech and
against global capital and state violence silence.
resonates with the strategic silences in The God These strategies do not merely signify trauma or
of Small Things. Understanding these authorial loss; they offer a redefinition of voice and agency.
contexts enhances our reading of silence not as Silence, when strategically deployed, speaks
passivity but as intentional and insurgent. volumes—it resists erasure, restores dignity, and
This study is limited to Anglophone fiction, reclaims narrative space. As such, postcolonial
thereby excluding significant voices writing in literature demands a readerly ethic of listening:
indigenous African and South Asian languages. one that attends not only to speech but also to
This omission narrows the linguistic and cultural what is withheld, occluded, or erased.
range of the analysis, particularly in traditions Historical Context
where oral storytelling or native-language
The colonial histories of Africa and South Asia
literature carries primary weight. Moreover,
were marked by conquest, cultural erasure, and
while the paper discusses gendered silences, it
the institutional silencing of native voices.
does not engage deeply with queer or non-binary
British colonial rule imposed foreign education
experiences, an omission that limits its
systems, censored indigenous languages, and
exploration of silence at the intersections of
redefined national narratives to suit imperial
sexuality, identity, and colonial marginalization.
agendas. These interventions disrupted
Lastly, by focusing on canonical texts, the paper
traditional forms of knowledge, created hybrid
may underrepresent subaltern or grassroots
identities, and left legacies of political and
narratives that articulate silence in other forms.
psychological dislocation. In India, the trauma of
Future scholarship could explore silence beyond Partition in 1947 amplified experiences of silence
written literature, in mediums such as oral and absence, especially for women. In African
history, ritual performance, or visual art— countries like Zimbabwe and Kenya, silence
domains where absence and presence operate became a survival mechanism amid nationalist
through gesture, rhythm, and space. The role of struggles and authoritarian regimes. This
silence in diasporic or second-generation historical background informs much of the
narratives also warrants deeper study, narrative texture of postcolonial literature from
particularly how inherited trauma is expressed these regions.
through intergenerational gaps. Texts such as
Authorial Intent and Biographical Note
Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing or Jhumpa Lahiri’s The
Namesake illustrate how silence travels across The authors analysed in this paper are deeply
borders, transforming into subtle acts of shaped by their sociohistorical and political
preservation or rebellion. contexts. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s rejection of English
in favour of Gikuyu exemplifies his resistance to
An interdisciplinary approach could also
linguistic colonisation. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s
consider how translation and multilingualism
writing stems from her experience as a
mediate silence—how certain meanings are lost,
Zimbabwean woman confronting both gender
distorted, or suppressed in translingual
oppression and the residues of colonial
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patriarchy. Arundhati Roy’s activism against [5] Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma,
globalisation and state violence finds echoes in Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
her portrayal of silence as political critique in The University Press, 1996.
[6] Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. 1988.
God of Small Things. Understanding these
Reprint, London: The Women's Press, 1994.
authorial perspectives enriches our reading of
[7] Gikandi, Simon. The Novel in Africa. Oxford:
silence as an intentional and meaningful Oxford University Press, 2009.
narrative strategy. [8] Irele, Abiola. The African Experience in Literature
and Ideology. London: Heinemann, 1981.
[9] LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing
III. CONCLUSION Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
In the examined corpus of African and South Press, 2001.
Asian postcolonial literature, silence and [10] Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism Without
absence are not narrative deficits but deliberate Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
acts of defiance and remembrance. These are not
[11] Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The
empty spaces but charged refusals—gestures
Politics of Language in African Literature. Nairobi:
that resist the reductive clarity demanded by Heinemann, 1986.
colonial discourse. Writers like Achebe, Ngũgĩ, [12] Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition:
Dangarembga, Roy, and Sidhwa demonstrate Violence, Nationalism and History in India.
that what remains unsaid often exposes deeper Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
truths than explicit narration can contain. [13] Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. 1997.
Reprint, New York: Random House, 1998.
These silences function on multiple levels: they
[14] Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon
give voice to trauma that resists articulation, Books, 1978.
critique epistemological violence, and reassert [15] Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India. 1991. Reprint, New
agency for historically marginalised subjects. York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Through ellipses, withheld histories, and [16] Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern
unspeakable memories, postcolonial literature Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of
complicates conventional notions of voice and Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence
visibility. In doing so, it demands that readers Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1988.
learn to interpret what lies beneath, beyond, or
between the lines.
Ultimately, this study affirms that silence, when
strategically deployed, is not a retreat but a
resistance, not absence but presence redefined.
It invites a more nuanced engagement with
postcolonial narratives—one that listens as
carefully to what is withheld as to what is
spoken.
REFERENCES
[1] Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1958. Reprint,
New York: Anchor Books, 1994.
[2] Boehmer, Elleke. Stories of Women: Gender and
Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2005.
[3] Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London:
Routledge, 1994.
[4] Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices
from the Partition of India. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2000.
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