FROM CATHARSIS TO NARRATIVE EXPOSURE: A TRANS-HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE OF TRAUMA, MEMORY, AND POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH IN PAKISTANI LITERATURE

Zahra Ahmad Abbasi; Dr. Noveen Javed

doi:10.71146/kjmr992

Authors

Zahra Ahmad Abbasi Lecturer Department of English Literature The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Author
Dr. Noveen Javed Assistant Professor Department of English Literature The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.71146/kjmr992

Keywords:

Pakistani literature, trauma and memory, Catharsis, Rasa theory, An-Nafs, Narrative Exposure Therapy, post-traumatic growth

Abstract

This study investigates the representation and transformation of trauma in Pakistani Urdu and English literature through a comparative dialogue among Aristotle's concept of catharsis, Bharata's Rasa theory, the concept of An-Nafs and contemporary Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). It argues that literary responses to trauma cannot be understood exclusively through modern psychological frameworks because Pakistani fiction repeatedly demonstrates older and culturally distinct ways of converting suffering into emotional recognition, aesthetic experience, self-reflection and historical understanding. A purposively selected corpus representing colonial rupture, Partition, post-Partition memory, the 1971 conflict, colonial historical recovery, postcolonial displacement, post-9/11 trauma, contemporary political violence, gendered trauma and spiritual transformation is examined through close textual and thematic analysis. Texts including Udaas Naslain, Aangan, Aag Ka Darya, Manto's Partition fiction, Cracking India, Basti, Noor, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Burnt Shadows, Home Fire, Alakh Nagri and Raja Gidh demonstrate recurring narrative processes through which traumatic experience is remembered, articulated, contextualized and reinterpreted. The analysis establishes that catharsis foregrounds emotional recognition, Rasa transforms affect into aesthetic experience, An-Nafs directs attention toward inner struggle and self-knowledge, while NET provides a contemporary model for organizing traumatic memories within an autobiographical framework. The study further finds that post-traumatic growth should not be treated as an automatic consequence of narrative exposure. Pakistani literary texts instead present varied outcomes ranging from unresolved rupture and repetition to historical onsciousness, accommodation, identity reconstruction, moral agency and spiritual reorientation. The study concludes that narrative can alter the relationship between trauma, memory and selfhood even when it cannot erase the original wound.

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