Full transcript
0:04[music]
0:09[music]
0:17>> Hello. I welcome you to my course
0:19introduction to medical humanities and
0:22this is the lecture 15 of the third
0:24week. This is the final lecture. Before
0:27this I have already discussed the mental
0:30health issue in which I primarily
0:33emphasized on how
0:36mental health is also an important
0:39component of
0:41health or well-being.
0:43Now in this particular lecture, I am
0:45going to talk about how trauma plays a
0:49vital role in decoding
0:52the
0:53health aspect. Now in medical humanities
0:57domain, trauma plays a very important
1:01role. I briefly touched upon it in my
1:03earlier slide. In this slide, I will
1:06kind of detail upon it through the lens
1:08of
1:09how memory and resilience plays
1:13out in the trauma narratives.
1:16Quickly, my lecture overview. I will
1:19begin with trauma as psychological,
1:22cultural and embodied condition linking
1:25to memory and resilience. What does this
1:28mean? This means that when you talk
1:30about memory of the trauma, it is not
1:34just then. It is also
1:37prolonging and that is what I kind of go
1:40ahead and discuss and I take in
1:43interdisciplinary elements
1:46into account in deciding what could be
1:49probably within the corpus of trauma
1:51narratives.
1:53The second aspect of this lecture will
1:56include the global and Indian
1:59trajectories uh in theorizing trauma.
2:01And I begin with Freud and come up to
2:05Veena Das and Gyanendra Pandey in the
2:07Indian context because they have
2:09immensely talked about trauma
2:10narratives, trauma of the partition to
2:13uh to be precise. Uh so, I take uh their
2:17uh theories to theorize how trauma
2:20impacts a particular person.
2:22Additionally, I take up three narratives
2:25and closely analyze them as per the
2:28theory available on trauma. I look at it
2:32within the socio-political context and
2:34finally arrive at why these narratives
2:37are important in the frame of medical
2:41humanities.
2:43>> [snorts]
2:43>> Let us begin with conceptualizing trauma
2:47in the scope of memory and resilience.
2:51So, if you look at the word trauma, it
2:53derives from the Greek word trauma,
2:56meaning wound. But, trauma is not just
3:01the wound. It is the afterlife of the
3:03wound. It is not only the event, it is
3:07the enduring psychic and bodily imprint
3:11of that particular incident. Now,
3:14imagine someone who survives communal
3:17violence during
3:19the partition.
3:21What happened to them? The violence of
3:23the partition perhaps lasted for a few
3:25days,
3:26for few years, maybe. But, the memory of
3:30it has sustained itself. The event in
3:33that sense is over, but the body that
3:36had experienced that pain, that trauma
3:40still remembers the phenomena.
3:42This is what in trauma theory is called
3:46as belated return.
3:49In this context, we find that the memory
3:52of the trauma is not linear. If you look
3:55at your
3:57slide, you will find that it involves
4:00different kind of fragmentation,
4:03flashback, and silence. We often come
4:06across
4:07an individual who experienced the
4:10personal loss, but at the same time, if
4:14different personal losses are combined
4:16together because of certain event that
4:20has taken place, we also see it in terms
4:23of collective memory, something like in
4:26the Indian context, we can talk about
4:28partition and emergency.
4:31Also, maybe, you know, the kind of
4:34violence you faced, the kind of
4:36socio-cultural humiliation you faced at
4:38that point of time, all those things are
4:40taken into consideration. Now, when we
4:43think of it like this, we find that
4:46probably the
4:47event happened only once, but just
4:50because it stays in your memory, you are
4:53constantly
4:55living that moment again and again. And
4:58the only way of surviving that
5:01particular trauma becomes the art of
5:05writing or telling about that narrative.
5:08So, that narration enables resilience.
5:12So, the art of storytelling or the art
5:16of depicting that trauma and sharing it
5:21with someone, either in writing or in
5:23person, becomes not a mode of
5:26resilience, it is a mode of survival.
5:30Let us take the trauma theory and begin
5:33with how Sigmund Freud talked about it
5:36in the first go. So, if you look at the
5:38clinical foundation, in fact, you will
5:41be surprised that the trauma theory
5:45has its foundation in medicine.
5:48And in fact, when you look at the
5:50clinical foundations, Sigmund Freud
5:52talks about trauma as repression and
5:55belated return. And he thinks of it as
5:59repeated compulsion. What does this
6:01mean? That most of the times when
6:04Sigmund Freud observed patients who
6:07could not consciously recall painful
6:10events, yet repeatedly relived them
6:13through dreams and compulsive behavior.
6:16Therefore, he realized that trauma is
6:19not fully grasped when it happens. It
6:22returns later. And that is an important
6:26aspect of trauma theory, the process of
6:29lingering of the memory associated with
6:32the trauma.
6:34The This idea of belatedness becomes
6:37central, and it says that trauma is
6:40delayed understanding.
6:42Pierre Janet, in his work Psychological
6:45Automatism, notes that traumatic memory
6:48does not flow like ordinary memory. The
6:51individual may feel split from their own
6:53experience, which we call dissociation.
6:57The turning point came
6:59in the trauma theory after the World
7:01Wars, when large number of soldiers
7:04displayed similar symptom. In the
7:06medical terminology, it was recognized
7:09as post-traumatic stress disorder in the
7:12third edition of the Diagnostic and
7:14Statistical Manual of Disorders,
7:16DSM-III. If you remember when I was
7:19taking up mental health disease and
7:21illness debate, I did discuss
7:25this model in which clinicians decide
7:28whether somebody is dealing with mental
7:29health issues or not. So, in the same
7:31way, these soldiers who had
7:35who had participated in World War
7:39in both the World Wars, either World War
7:41I or II, they came up with these kind of
7:44psychological symptoms because there was
7:47some kind of memory of the trauma of war
7:50that remained there.
7:52Yet, the focus was still on the
7:54individual sufferer. A major shift
7:57occurs when scholars begin asking, "What
8:00if trauma is not personal, but social?
8:04What if it is inherited?" So, there are
8:06three theorists who we can take up in
8:09this foray.
8:10Cathy Caruth,
8:12talking about the testimonial turn,
8:14Dori Laub, talking about how witnessing
8:18becomes an ethical healing, and Dominick
8:21LaCapra, who distinguished between
8:23compulsive acting out and reflective
8:26working through.
8:28Now, if you look at these theorists, you
8:31will find that in most of the cases,
8:34what they have emphasized on is that any
8:38kind of testimony, any kind of narration
8:43of the trauma, is a way of survival.
8:47Uh and that is something which was very
8:49crucial in the understanding of how
8:53humanities was also aligning itself with
8:56something which was considered to be
8:58clinical, which was kind of finding its
9:00roots into the clinical domain. Uh
9:04so, when you think of these concepts of
9:08postmemory, especially by Marianne
9:10Hirsch, you find that even the children
9:13of the Holocaust survivors inherit
9:16memories of events they never directly
9:18experienced. They grew up within
9:21stories, silences, and emotional
9:23residues. Trauma thus moves from I
9:26experience this to I inherit this, and
9:30thus became intergenerational.
9:33The term was introduced in her work,
9:35Family Frames, Photography, Narrative,
9:39and Postmemory in 1997.
9:43Another intervention that is significant
9:46and we must note down in the case of
9:48tracing trauma theory is the
9:50postcolonial intervention. Now, in this
9:54kind of an intervention, colonial
9:57invasion as is an important historical
10:00event that we will mark. Uh if you look
10:02at Frantz Fanon's 1961
10:06book, The Wretched of the Earth, it
10:07argues colonialism invading the psyche,
10:12producing racialized inferiority, and
10:15fractured identities.
10:18Ashis Nandy also interpreted colonialism
10:21as a civilizational and psychic wound.
10:24And in his book,
10:26The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of
10:29Self under Colonialism, he mentions this
10:33explicitly.
10:34Another theorist that we can think of in
10:37this regard is Rob Nixon's Slow
10:40Violence, a term which is very Most of
10:42the times we hear of this particular
10:43word in many debates, uh also in some of
10:47the recent papers that I read, I'm
10:50finding this term uh
10:52quite popularly used. But what does this
10:54mean? This means that he introduced the
10:58term Slow Violence to unfold gradually
11:03what trauma was
11:05happening because of displacement,
11:08poverty, and ecological deconstruction.
11:12And this particular phenomena was
11:14referred to in his 2011 work, Slow
11:17Violence and Environmentalism of the
11:19Poor.
11:20In the Indian context, too, we find that
11:24Veena Das, in her book, Life and Words:
11:28Violence and the Descent into the
11:30Ordinary, shows how violence, especially
11:33partition, sinks into everyday life.
11:37Trauma in that sense becomes absorbed in
11:40everyday uh patterns of living.
11:44Another uh theorist that we can take
11:46into account while we are discussing
11:48trauma theory is Urvashi Butalia, a very
11:51famous name in the context of partition
11:53narratives.
11:54Her book, published in 1988,
11:58titled The Other Side of Silence, Voices
12:01from the Partition of India, reveals how
12:03gender trauma survives in silence
12:05through oral narratives.
12:07Gyanendra Pandey critiques how official
12:10historiography reduces communal violence
12:13to statistics in his 2001 book,
12:16Remembering Partition, Violence,
12:18Nationalism, and History in India,
12:21making literature and testimony vital
12:24counter archives. Thus, what we see is
12:27that trauma narratives or these trauma
12:30theories move from being personal to
12:34psychological to also historical in
12:37certain sense. We take up three
12:39narratives now for analysis, very brief
12:42analysis. Uh
12:44The first one is Pinjar by Amrita Pritam
12:47on your screen.
12:49The second one is Toba Tek Singh by
12:52Saadat Hasan Manto. And third one, A
12:55Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Now, if
12:59you look at uh
13:00Pinjar, uh you will find that it is the
13:03it is the story of a young woman who was
13:08uh
13:09uh you know, who was abducted by Rashid.
13:11Her name is Poojo, and she was abduct
13:14abducted by Rashid, and then
13:17when she wants to come back, even when
13:19she escapes from there and wants to come
13:21back to her family, the family doesn't
13:24accept.
13:26Now, she lives in a perennial trauma of
13:29so many things. First,
13:32she has to change her name. She became
13:34Hamida. So, her identity is compromised.
13:38So, there is no
13:40no identity. She's now living a new
13:42identity. So, she's living in the trauma
13:45of reconstructing
13:47her identity. She had to change her
13:49place. So, that is another negotiation
13:52she's making. And also, the religion
13:54change. I mean, put together, this
13:57creates a kind of a trauma that lives
13:59with her. It is a very personal kind of
14:02narrative that uh
14:04Amrita Pritam weaves in her work Pinjar.
14:08It's a narrative in that sense of
14:11gendered partition trauma where abducted
14:14female body becomes a site of both
14:17violence and ethical resistance. So, it
14:19is not just that it is a story of a
14:23woman who faced violence during the
14:26partition time. It is the narrative of
14:29many women who might have
14:31faced a similar trajectory. But, when
14:34you look at Amrita Pritam's work, you
14:37find that trauma of
14:40Puro, which is in Pinjar, is very
14:43multi-layered, very complex.
14:46Another short story that I'm taking up
14:48is Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto.
14:51And a very poignant tale of what
14:54happened during the partition. If you
14:56look at this particular
14:59short story,
15:01uh
15:02the narrative is taking place in a
15:04mental asylum.
15:05Now, post-partition,
15:07both India and Pakistan decide that they
15:10are going to exchange their people in
15:13the asylum on the basis of their
15:15religion.
15:17Now, Toba Tek Singh keeps asking who
15:19where is Toba Tek Singh? Where is Toba
15:21Tekh Singh? And doesn't know what this
15:25partition is like. What is this exchange
15:27is going to happen? In fact, most of the
15:30people who are living in that asylum are
15:33unaware of this partition that has
15:35happened
15:36which is India and Pakistan. So, for
15:39Toba Tekh Singh as well, when the shift
15:41is happening of the borders, he just
15:43doesn't know where he belongs. In fact,
15:46if you read the short story, you will
15:48find that Toba Tekh Singh just
15:52you know, dies in in between space of
15:56India and Pakistan.
15:58He refuses to cross the border. This
16:00again is a psychic dislocation of
16:03partition. So, from personal to
16:05psychological, we see that kind of a
16:07shift in Saadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tekh
16:10Singh. The third and important uh
16:15trauma narrative that we are taking up
16:17in Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance.
16:19Now, this is set in emergency, somewhere
16:22around 1975
16:24to 1977,
16:25and it portrays violence, forced
16:29sterilization, and urban displacement
16:31revealing structural trauma and fragile
16:34solidarity of resilience. So, all the
16:37four protagonists in this particular
16:40book, they find a certain sense of
16:42solidarity during
16:44this emergency period, and that is what
16:46we come across in this narrative. In all
16:49these three narratives, let us take it
16:51forward how they work as healing
16:53archives and sites of resistance is
16:55something we will
16:57decode.
16:59Let us come to
17:01the gendered and embodied trauma in
17:03Pinjar. I said like I said earlier, it's
17:06a personal kind of trauma that Amrita
17:09Pritam talks about. The first thing, the
17:13event that happens is that there is an
17:15abduction of Puro that is there due to
17:20uh the partition
17:23violence. So, as a as a violence, I
17:26mean, female body becomes a site of
17:28communal honor. And therefore, in this
17:32abduction, which happens due to the
17:34partition violence, uh you find that
17:37Puro suffers a trauma which is very
17:40problematic. Like I mentioned earlier,
17:42>> [snorts]
17:42>> it is an identity fracture for her where
17:45she transforms from being Puro to Hamida
17:48when her family doesn't take her. That's
17:50a religious kind of an identity change
17:53for her. She suffers in silence. There
17:57is nobody. So, you imagine this woman
18:00who's been abducted and now she has to
18:02live in a different kind of a family.
18:04There is nobody in that setup who she
18:07can share with. And therefore, her
18:09suffering is entirely in silence. What
18:13happens, she internalizes that
18:15suffering. And then, uh the trauma is
18:18embedded in her everyday life. And
18:21finally, when we see, we find that there
18:23is an ethical resistance through final
18:26act of choice she makes. She decides to
18:29just stay back.
18:32Uh the second one I as I had briefly
18:35mentioned earlier, and I will take up a
18:36little more in this particular analysis,
18:40is Toba Tek Singh. Now, also you must be
18:43seeing that I'm using uh the images from
18:46the films. These two literary narratives
18:49that I'm talking about have already been
18:50converted into films. So, it totally
18:53depends on you what is the choice you
18:55want to make in terms of either reading
18:58the text or watching the film. It is
19:00absolutely your choice what you want to
19:02do. Both have a similar narrative, but
19:05yes, when you do a close reading of
19:08either of the text, whether it is the
19:09literary text or the cinematic text,
19:12It's just your approach that has to
19:14change, the gaze that has to change, but
19:16otherwise the issues pretty much remain
19:18the
19:19same. So, in Toba Tek Singh, we find
19:22that asylum is a metaphor for fractured
19:26nation. The nation which is now divided
19:30into India and Pakistan. There is
19:33immense And why does the writer use the
19:36asylum for Why does the writer use
19:39asylum as a space of
19:41narrative as a plot place? Because this
19:44madness exposes political absurdity. At
19:48that point of time, a quite
19:49understandable that there was a a
19:52political absurdity. There was no fixed
19:55uh
19:56guideline as to what would be the
19:59protocol. So, therefore, naturally while
20:01borders were violent abstraction. So,
20:04what is the border of India? What is the
20:06border of Pakistan? This was not known
20:09to the general public. And that is the
20:11confusion Toba Tek Singh also reflects
20:14in this particular short story. There is
20:17a statelessness and existential
20:19dislocation. Like, all of a sudden,
20:21India was just everything and now
20:23somebody is saying, "This is Pakistan.
20:25This is India." And this kind of
20:28dislocation that leads to
20:30uh statelessness is very well reflected.
20:33Uh if you read the short story, there is
20:36a gibberish kind of language Toba Tek
20:38Singh uses, and that is also mentioned
20:42uh in in the short story. And this
20:44language breakdown has been bracketed as
20:47the psychic reflection of the
20:49uh rupture. Uh if you see in the initial
20:53text, there was hardly hardly any space
20:55for irony and satire. But by now, uh you
20:58will find that the personal has gone
21:00into the psychological, and we also see
21:03the use of irony and satire within the
21:06uh narrative. Finally, like I said, Toba
21:09Tek Singh chooses to die
21:11in in between spaces of India and
21:13Pakistan, clearly indicating no man's
21:17land as an unresolved trauma. So, the
21:20trauma that he faces is unresolved, and
21:23of course it just not speaks for his
21:25trauma alone, but a collective trauma
21:27that many people must have faced during
21:28the partition.
21:30In fact, in the case of India, partition
21:32is one such event that there are
21:35so many narratives and still many
21:37stories remain unfold. Many stories
21:40still are waiting to be told.
21:43In Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, we
21:46find the period emergency period, and if
21:51you know
21:52a little bit of history of the
21:55emergency, you will find that at that
21:57point of time there was forced
21:59sterilization that happened as part of a
22:03population control measure. This in some
22:06way is considered to be the bodily
22:08violation because there was no consent
22:11involved in the people who were getting
22:14sterilized.
22:16This was shortly a little bit of
22:18class-oriented scheme in which many
22:21slums were demolished and displacement
22:23took place. Now,
22:25this was in in some sense, in Rohinton
22:29Mistry's narrative, you will find
22:32because all the four characters are
22:34coming from the slum areas, you find
22:37that it is a social humiliation for them
22:41because of their economic precarity. So,
22:44they are people from I mean,
22:47economically not so privileged class,
22:49and that is why they face this social
22:52humiliation of you know, being forcibly
22:56sterilized.
22:57In this kind of
23:00trauma, which is not personal, but
23:02collective.
23:04Friendship as a fragile solidarity. What
23:06does this mean? That when the similar
23:09kind of trauma is afflicted on different
23:12individuals, they
23:15they kind of come together and form a
23:18solidarity of pain and suffering.
23:21>> [snorts]
23:21>> This is what Mysteries
23:24calls it survival without sentimental
23:26resolution. So, there is not much of
23:29overpouring, there is not much of
23:30narrative, but still it's a sentimental
23:34kind of resolution that is taking place.
23:37Finally, when we come to the individual
23:40resilience in the narrative, we find
23:42that in
23:44Puro in Pinjar, Puro's final moral
23:47choice in Pinjar reclaims agency beyond
23:50communal ownership, which means that the
23:53she decides to value her own agency
23:58above everything else.
24:00In
24:01Toba Tek Singh, it becomes symbolic
24:04resistance. Like the very idea that he
24:06chooses to die that in that in-between
24:09space is
24:11resistance in Toba Tek Singh.
24:13In
24:15A Fine Balance, all the four characters,
24:18Dina, Ishwar, Om, and Maneck form
24:21fragile solidarities. They become
24:22friends.
24:24So, the violence is taking place, but
24:27because all of them are precarious in
24:29that situation, all of them have a
24:31vulnerable state of economy in that
24:34particular situation,
24:35they try to
24:38become friends. And there is where A
24:41Fine Balance happens. In all this, you
24:43will find that survival happens through
24:45witnessing. You see the trauma that is
24:48happening, and that is how you survive.
24:50The testimony in Pinjar preserves
24:52women's partition memory, and Manto's
24:55satire in Toba Tek Singh transforms
24:58absurdity into a political critique.
25:01Uh finally, when it comes to tracing the
25:03evolution of trauma narratives in Indian
25:05literature, these are just three
25:07examples. Like I said, we have many many
25:10narratives of uh partition that you can
25:13uh
25:14think about. I mean, a quick search will
25:16let you know, but I just took up these
25:18three because they uh helped me uh talk
25:22about or they helped me trace the
25:25trajectory. Where in earlier narratives,
25:28you framed trauma through symbolism and
25:30moral allegory to how initial, I mean,
25:35narratives used irony, satire, and
25:38metaphor to process shock. So, in the
25:41initial years when the partition took
25:43place, people were in shock, and
25:46therefore all these language tools were
25:48used because the the trauma that they
25:51experienced was within them, and through
25:53language it was getting uh externalized.
25:57Uh
25:58you see a gradual shift from being
26:01personal to psychological realism led in
26:05the character interiority, especially if
26:07you take the case of Pinjar. And later,
26:11this personal and psychological becomes
26:14structural when, you know,
26:16administration also steps in creating
26:20that kind of a trauma. You find that a a
26:22very classic case in Rohinton Mistry's A
26:25Fine Balance. Finally, when you look at
26:28these texts, they become a journey from
26:31individual suffering to structural and
26:33collective consciousness. As earlier
26:35texts focused on singular tragic
26:38figures,
26:39the partition stories foregrounded
26:41immediate rupture and absurdity in Toba
26:43Tek Singh, followed by later narratives
26:45contextualizing trauma within social
26:48structures. The community thus becomes
26:51central, not just the individual. So,
26:54this means that trauma is not just
26:57individual, but also central to the
26:59system in which it kind of gets
27:02inflicted. Finally, trauma increasingly
27:05depicted as ongoing and inherent, which
27:08means that it's not like one event
27:10happened and you face the trauma and it
27:12ends there. It goes it comes back, it
27:16returns, and that is how trauma
27:18narrative survive. In the case of
27:20trauma narratives in India, we find that
27:24from colonial times, there is a
27:26nation-making rooted in the violent
27:28rupture and displacement, where trauma,
27:32which is personal at some point of time,
27:34individual at some point of time, takes
27:37shape of a collective memory and borders
27:40producing statelessness, fractured
27:43belonging, and identity instability,
27:45leading to India's political
27:47consciousness across generations. And
27:50these two uh texts that I chose, Pinjar
27:53and Toba Tek Singh, are classic example
27:56of it. Other than that, women's body
27:58become a site of uh you know, inflicting
28:02that trauma. We see it through Pinjar
28:04and the post-colonial state and
28:06authority in which state uh becomes a
28:09site of inflicting trauma. We see it not
28:13just through uh Fine Balance, but also a
28:15little bit through uh Toba Tek Singh,
28:18where you find that administrative
28:20framework produces trauma and the bodies
28:23are regulated to
28:25to be inflicted and bear that bear the
28:28burden of that trauma.
28:30So, on that note, I will close and talk
28:33about little bit in terms of why this
28:36narrative is important in the context of
28:38medical humanities because
28:40what these trauma narratives do is that
28:44they reframe trauma. What do I mean by
28:46reframing trauma? That they go beyond
28:49psychiatric diagnosis. They are from
28:52isolated event to lift condition. So,
28:55they cannot be just taken as event in
28:56history and talk about individual wound
29:00to social experience. So, because it's
29:02not just one person's experience alone,
29:05it becomes a social experience is what
29:07we have to highlight.
29:08They
29:10emphasize on the lived experience is
29:13another point that you have to make,
29:15which is a important component of
29:17medical humanities. Therefore,
29:19embodiment of memory and pain happens
29:23and these bodies are marked by identity
29:25and vulnerability and illness and trauma
29:29is interconnected. I must make it a
29:31point that illness is mostly
29:34patient-centric. So, there are symptoms
29:37which people
29:38talk about in terms of their
29:40perspectives and all this leads to
29:43enabling ethical and interdisciplinary
29:46care where embodying of the violence
29:49becomes a issue of health care and
29:52humanities informs empathetic practice
29:56where you know that the narration of
30:00these trauma narratives become an act of
30:04survival, an act of resilience. So,
30:08thank you so much. I look forward to now
30:10analyzing texts with you in the next
30:13unit. Thanks.