The colonial conquest of Identity: exploring silence, memory, and narrative agency as resistance in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night (1996)

Abstract

This dissertation explores the enduring impact of trauma, originating from colonial violence, on identity and memory within the postcolonial Caribbean context through a close reading of Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night (1996). It investigates how colonial violence, namely narrative erasure and silencing extends beyond political subjugation to inscribe itself onto personal identities and collective memory, leaving psychological scars that persist long after formal independence. Central to this study is how memory operates as a repository of trauma and as a means of narrative agency and resistance, and how silence could potentially enable the affirmation of identities which have been historically erased by colonial discourse. By focusing on characters from the novel like Mala and Chandin Ramchandin, the analysis reveals how Chandin’s internalised colonial mimicry forms part of a larger cycle of domestic violence and abuse which mirrors violent colonial hierarchies. Mala’s silence and psychological fragmentation also serve as an allegory for the erasure of postcolonial identities as her trauma manifests both in the withdrawal of language and societal neglect. This dissertation employs an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, drawing on postcolonial theory, trauma theory, memory studies and research on silence in literature, engaging with scholars such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Maurice Halbwachs, Cathy Caruth and Charles Glicksberg. The study examines how various narrative techniques including non-linear narration, narrative ambiguity and polyphonic narration mirror the fragmented nature of memory and facilitates a counter-discursive space where silenced voices emerge. By situating Cereus Blooms at Night (1996) in a much broader Caribbean literary canon, the project aims to demonstrate how Mootoo subverts traditional binaries surrounding victimhood and agency, public and private as well as natural versus unnatural identities. Finally, the dissertation contends that memory and silence, despite their inscrutable and fractured nature, are capable of functioning as powerful tools for resistance and identity reclamation, urging postcolonial identities to renegotiate their personal narratives and collective histories that have for so long been silenced. At large, this project contributes to ongoing dialogue around how postcolonial literature grapples with memory, silence and trauma as key factors in the reconstitution of identity.