Master'sOpen AccessEN
Remembering violence through landscape: The dual struggles of ecological and social sovereignty in contemporary postcolonial anglophone fiction
This thesis examines the literary representation of the natural and built environment at the intersection of memory, identity, and belonging in Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator and Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees. Set in Kashmir and Cyprus, respectively, the novels foreground territorial conflict and ecological degradation. Drawing on postcolonial ecocritical scholarship, the thesis highlights how the selected works portray the divided borderlands as inseparable from the human experience of violence, foregrounding the land as both witness and repository of trauma. The study also explores how these authors demonstrate alternate forms of narrating landscapes and ecological trauma, which is rooted in their differing authorial positionings. Waheed's narration of the conflict relies on an embodied connection to the land, whereas Shafak's narrative employs a symbolic representation of the environment, relying on themes of interdependence and ecological mourning. This difference in narrative technique, which stems from their insider versus outsider gaze, raises questions about the claim to representation and the commitment to preserving the memory of (eco)violence. By studying Waheed's bottom-up approach vis-a-vis Shafak's outsider gaze, this work underscores how literary narratives offer counter-histories to dominant representations of conflict and ecological harm. Ultimately, the thesis explores how literature can (re)imagine landscapes as witnesses to and agents in the processes of remembering, resistance, and healing.
