ABSTRACT
The aesthetic is often influenced by the material and the material reality of the artist is often influential in determining the implications that the aesthetic carries. This chapter explores the materiality of memory as an intimate reality and its relevance in Ghatak’s representation of Partition, limiting its scope to a close reading of his selected short stories. Displacement, which ensued in the immediate aftermath of Partition, resulted in the formulation of subject consciousness that was devised on the premises of nostalgia. The chapter, through a close reading of the texts, explores Ghatak’s engagement with nostalgia and his understanding of displaced subjectivity as bounded and hauntologized by the paradigm of memory.
