Exposition of Verdrängung as a Literary Technique in Kiran Desai’sThe Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

Verdrängung or the ‘repression of memories’ popularly known as dissociative amnesia in psychiatry has been a surrounded by debatesever since the recollection of its genesis in the 1890s. It had recentlykindled a literary debate during resarch conducted by a team of researchers of psychiatryat Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital.The researchers, drawing illustrations from the English literature prior to eighteenth century, claimed that Verdrängung or dissociative amnesia is an outcome of socio-culutral exchange, rather than and inherent nerological condition of the brain. They contested that Verdrängung has an immense, unexploited potential in literature. The aim of this paper is to explore the use of Verdrängung as a literary technique in the narrative of Man Booker Prize winning novelist Kiran Desai through her character Jemubhai Patel in The Inheritance of Loss.