TRAUMA, STIGMATIZATION, AND THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL IN MIRZA WAHEED’S THE COLLABORATOR.

Abstract

This study aims to analyze how The Collaborator (2011) is an indication of the psychological implications of war and social stigmatization of forced cooperation in the war-torn Kashmir. The novel offers a critical perspective on the dynamics of militarization and the method of mass violence and is particularly useful in the context of the novel due to the interconnection of trauma, stigma, and survival in the conditions of the long conflict. The study has a qualitative design, with close textual analysis being the main instrument and the trauma theory as the theoretical approach. Such a combination makes it possible to read the techniques of narration used by Waheed, i.e., the fragmented memory, the use of sensory images and language paradoxes, as conveying psychic traumas of violence but placing them in the framework of wider social and political processes. The analysis demonstrates three main findings, which are: first, that trauma can be represented as a residual, embodied intrusion into the world of memory and perception; second, that stigma is a product of communal judgment, silence, and rumor, and that survival itself becomes a betrayal and paradoxical, maintaining the physical life at the cost of personal and collective identity. The paper concludes that the novel by Waheed emphasizes the ability of literature to witness silenced experiences as well as to express the social aspects of trauma in militarized societies.