Transforming Subalternity And Narrative Indeterminacy: Representation, Epistemic Marginalization, And Postcolonial Counternarratives In Nadeem Aslam’S Maps For Lost Lovers

The present study is the analysis of the issue of Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) of Nadeem Aslam in the light of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s theoretical discussion of subaltern representation, representation, and epistemic violence, with a special focus on the issue of subaltern representation and narrative indeterminacy in modernism/postmodernism. Instead of assuming that such marginalized characters have a self-evident or a wholly independent voice that the novelist can produce, the study examines the conditions of text and of ideas under which it becomes audible, for instance distorted, mediated, or silenced. The analysis will emphasize, especially, the marginalised – Kaukab, Chanda, Mah-Jabin, Suraya – who live between patriarchal, religious, diasporic, linguistic, and cultural organizations. Nadeem Aslam’s fractured narrative structure, varying tones and voices, gaps in the story, memories, different interpretations, and temporal discontinuities pose difficulty in the possibility of having a single “authoritative” version of the events. These measures step into the space for ‘counternarratives’ and reveal the representational constraints of representation as such. In the case of Kaukab, she is hyper-marginalised in British society, due to her language, class, women status, immigrant status, and yet holds lots of power in her own household. In this sense, her characterization exemplifies ‘the relational and unstable nature of subalternity. The paper argues that Maps for Lost Lovers is not only an effort to “give voice” to marginalized subjects, but also an effort to articulate that voice, to make sense of it, and to make it legitimate in contestatory power dynamics. Keywords: Subalternity, Epistemic Violence, Representation, Narrative Indeterminacy, Postcolonialism, Counternarrative