Filling the Void: Transgenerational Haunting and the Burden of Replacement in Vijay’s The Far Field

Abstract

The dominant focus on Euro-American perspectives has overshadowed the global resonance of trauma studies, particularly conflict-ridden regions like Kashmir. This study seeks to redress this imbalance by examining the experiences of trauma among Kashmiris, who have faced continuous political turbulence and militarization since the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Vijay’s The Far Field (2019) serves as a critical narrative, illustrating the perilous temporal connections between past and present. In this study, The Replacement Child perspective provided by Schwab (2010) has been used to trace the legacy of transgenerational trauma in Vijay's narrative. The spectral haunting that the replacement child must deal with has been investigated by the researcher. Furthermore, Derrida's concept of "supplementarity" has been used to elucidate the phenomenon. The focus of this study is to unravel the spatio-temporal aspects and the extent of this transference in the offspring of the perpetrators. Future studies must investigate the ways in which the Replacement Child trope functions in other postcolonial works in order to uncover the psychological underpinnings of transgenerational trauma.