Paper Details

Name: Kumar Harsh
Country: India

Year: 2023
Volume: Volume-10, Issue-2 (July-December)
Page Number: 14-21

ABSTRACT
Postcolonial English fiction has consistently engaged with the psychological, cultural, and historical consequences of colonial domination. Among its most significant concerns are memory, trauma, and fragmented identity, because colonialism did not merely occupy territories but also unsettled histories, languages, communities, and subjectivities. This paper critically examines how postcolonial English fiction represents the fractured self through the narrative reconstruction of personal and collective memory. It argues that memory in postcolonial fiction functions not only as recollection but also as resistance against colonial erasure, while trauma emerges as a historical wound that disturbs linear narration and stable identity. Through selected references to writers such as Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Jean Rhys, Toni Morrison, J. M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the paper explores how postcolonial narratives use disrupted chronology, polyphonic voices, intergenerational memory, silence, and linguistic hybridity to represent damaged but resilient identities. The study concludes that fragmented identity in postcolonial fiction is not simply a sign of loss; it is also a mode of cultural negotiation, ethical remembrance, and historical re-articulation.

Keywords: Postcolonial fiction, memory, trauma, fragmented identity, colonialism,
hybridity, history, displacement, narrative.