Unearthing Colonial Wounds: Tracing the Impacts of Trauma on Indian Identity in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 MA in India studies, Department of South and East Asia and Oceania Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Department of South and East Asia and Oceania Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

3 Assistant Professor, Department of European Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The impact of colonization on identity construction has emerged as a critical area of inquiry, particularly among postcolonial writers, novelists, and theorists. This paper investigates the psychological and cultural ramifications of colonial domination on the identity formation of colonized individuals, with particular emphasis on experiences of alienation and identity loss. Kiran Desai’s novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006) is analyzed through the theoretical frameworks of Stuart Hall’s concept of cultural identity and Frantz Fanon’s exploration of colonial trauma and its effects on subjectivity. This study contends that colonization fundamentally disrupts the continuity of cultural identity and induces a condition of psychological fragmentation, resulting in enduring displacement, alienation, and a decentered sense of self among the colonized. The findings demonstrate that in The Inheritance of Loss, colonial trauma manifests through internalized cultural inferiority, linguistic alienation, and intergenerational identity rupture, particularly visible in the judge’s self-erasure and Biju’s diasporic disillusionment. These experiences reveal a uniquely postcolonial condition of fractured identity, marked by alienation, double displacement, and a decentered sense of self rooted in the enduring psychological legacies of colonial domination.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Abraham, A. P. (2017). Postcolonial dilemmas in Kiran Desai’s The inheritance of loss. Journal for Research Scholars and Professionals of English Language Teaching, 1(3), 2456-8104.
Asghar, M. A., & Sharjeel, W. (2002). A diaspora study of Kiran Desai’s The inheritance of loss. European Journal of English Language and Literature, 8(3), 25–33.
Ashcroft, B., Tiffin, H., & Griffiths, G. (Eds.). (2005). The post-colonial studies reader (2nd ed.). London, England: Routledge.
Barker, C., & Willis, P. E. (2012). Cultural studies: Theory and practice. London, England: SAGE.
Bhabha, H. K. (1993). The location of culture. London, England: Routledge.
Bharvad, R. (2014). The inheritance of loss: A story of colonized minds and the subsequent impacts of immigration and westernization. International Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 3, 25–30.
Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods (4th ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chelliah, S. (2017). Kiran Desai as an emerging postcolonial writer with the skill for exploration of human psyche and alienation in her fictional world: An appraisal. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Humanities, 2(2), 98–102.
Desai, K. (2006). The inheritance of loss. New Delhi, India: Penguin.
Dizayi, S. A. H. (2019). The crisis of identity in postcolonial literature [PhD dissertation, Istanbul Aydin University]. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337649404_The_Crisis_of_Identity_in_Postcolonial_Literature
Fanon, F. (1968). The wretched of the earth. New York, NY: Grove Press.
Hall, S. (1996). Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference (pp. 222–237). London, England: Sage.
Kaur, G. (2021). Psychological conflicts and identity crisis faced by two generations of Indian diaspora: A comparative study of works of Bharti Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(16), 1564–1568.
Kohn, M., & Reddy, K. (2017). Colonialism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/colonialism/
Kumar, R. (2020). Identity crisis suffered by the women protagonists in the novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai: A comparative study. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 12(5), 1–6.
Maharana, D. (2021). Kiran Desai's The inheritance of loss: A study on globalization, immigration and postcolonialism. Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, 8(8), 176–180.
Pettigrew, A. M. (1997). What is a processual analysis? Scandinavian Journal of Management, 13, 337–348.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Silas, J. (2019). Identity crisis in the novels and short stories of Arun Joshi. International Journal of Technical Research & Science, 4(10), 26–29.
Swarna, S. (2021). Postcolonial issues in Kiran Desai's The inheritance of loss. Research Journal of English Language and Literature, 9(3), 205–209.
Xu, S. (2020). Cultural Trauma in The Inheritance of Loss. Review of Educational Theory, 3(4), 64–69.
Zia-Ebrahimi, R. (2011). /Self-orientalization and dislocation: The uses and abuses of the Aryan discourse in Iran. Iranian Studies, 44(4), 445–472.

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 18 March 2025
  • Revise Date: 10 September 2025
  • Accept Date: 23 September 2025

Share

How to cite

Statistics