https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i4.083
Affective Geographies and the Spatial Poetics of Exile in Siddhartha Gigoo’s A Long Season of Ashes
MS AKHILA AJITH
Research Scholar, Department of English,
Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit (SSUS), Kalady, Kerala
&
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Christ College (Autonomous) Irinjalakuda, Thrissur, Kerala
akhila@christcollegeijk.edu.in
Abstract: This paper explores the affective reconfiguration of space in Siddhartha Gigoo’s A Long Season of Ashes: A Memoir, situating the narrative within contemporary discourses of exile, memory and displacement. Moving beyond historiographic and testimonial readings of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus, the study reconceptualises space as an effectively saturated construct constituted through memory, loss and the spectral persistence of absence. Domestic and cultural spaces, once sites of belonging, are reimagined as fractures and inaccessible while exilic environments acquire dense emotional significance. Through fragmented narration and evocative imagery, the text produces what may be termed “affective geographies” wherein space becomes a repository of trauma and a medium through which identity is continually negotiated. In doing so, the novel complicated the fixed notions of home and belonging, revealing exile as an ongoing, embodied experience rather than a singular historical rupture. The novel’s spatial imagination also reveals how memory operates not as a static recollection of the past but as a force that constantly reshapes the present. While existing scholarship on Kashmiri Pandit narratives largely focuses on testimonial and political frameworks, this paper contributes a nuanced perspective by examining how emotional and spatial dimensions intersect to reconfigure the experience of displacement.
Keywords: Affective Geographies, Exile, Displacement, Memory, Trauma, Spatiality, Kashmiri Pandit Narratives
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