THE SOCIO-SPATIAL MATRIX IN THE SELECT NOVELS OF EASTERINE KIRE

Abstract

This dissertation draws on a geocritical vocabulary to interrogate how places, spaces and narratives interact with each other within the foundational institutions of literary representation. I approach this critical framework by grounding it within the writings of Nagaland writer Easterine Kire. Anglophone writing from India’s Northeast is an emergent literature that has steadily garnered academic interest. This dissertation draws from, adds to, and is structured by the body of spatial theories to build up a cross-disciplinary approach, where history, geography, and anthropology will meet the fictional writings of Easterine Kire, an eminent writer from Nagaland, within a postcolonial spatial framework. The thesis, in the spirit of geocritical theorists like Robert Tally, Bernard Westphal, and Eric Prieto, explores how through spatial tropes of collective memories, intangible heritage, and embodied topos, Kire foregrounds a literary map of Nagaland from the 1940s to the 2000- a phase marked by tremendous socio-political-cultural changes. Using the core concept of “geocritical studies” under the broad umbrella term of Spatial Humanities, geographical concepts such as space and place, social space, and spatial history, this dissertation traces the construction of “historical”, “bioregional” and “lived spaces” in Kire’s fiction through which the totality of these changes can be mapped. A geocritical reading of these texts facilitates an enriched understanding of the ways in which space and place condition experiences within, thoughts about, and understandings of this multidimensional world. The genesis of the thesis depends on the proposition that literary text functions as a map of a place against which the narrative world is built, aiding the readers to navigate the "storyworld" of the narrative text. A critical approach called "geocriticism" that takes into account the way in which real-world landscapes intersect with the fictional story's spatial orientation. This dissertation takes six novels of Easterine Kire namely A Terrible Matriarchy (2007), Mari (2010), Bitter Wormwood (2011), When the River Sleeps (2014), Son of the Thundercloud (2016), Don't Run My Love (2017), and A Respectable Woman (2019) to explore the “emplotment” of spatial metaphors in the narrative space.