Dr. Aisha Rahman
Department of Comparative Literature, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
aisha.rahman@jnu.ac.in | ORCID: 0000-0002-1824-5678
Abstract
This paper proposes a hermeneutic framework for interpreting archival silence—not as absence of evidence, but as a generative textual presence. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of sous rature and Spivak’s critique of subaltern speech, I analyze three post-colonial literary archives from South Asia (1947–1971). Through close reading of marginalia, censored passages, and untranslated fragments, I argue that silence functions as a deliberate rhetorical strategy that resists colonial epistemologies. The study introduces the concept of “stratified silence,” wherein layers of omission correspond to hierarchies of power, language, and memory. Findings suggest that archival silence is not a void but a palimpsest—knowledge overwritten, yet faintly legible. This excavation challenges traditional historiographic methods and calls for a decolonial hermeneutics that reads against the grain of presence.
Keywords: archival silence, post-colonial literature, hermeneutics, decolonial reading, stratified absence, South Asian archives
1. Introduction
The archive is often imagined as a repository of presence—documents, letters, manuscripts that testify to historical truth. Yet, what remains unrecorded, redacted, or destroyed constitutes an equally potent archive of absence. This paper excavates silence not as lack, but as a structured, meaningful discourse embedded within post-colonial literary collections. Focusing on the period between India’s independence (1947) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), I examine three archives: the private papers of Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri, the censored drafts of Bengali novelist Samaresh Basu, and the untranslated Tamil correspondence of activist Rettamalai Srinivasan.
2. Theoretical Framework: Silence as Text
Derrida’s notion of sous rature (under erasure) provides the foundational lens: a word is inadequate yet necessary, crossed out but still visible. Silence, similarly, is crossed out presence—erased, yet structurally operative. Spivak’s (1988) question—“Can the subaltern speak?”—is reframed here as: When the subaltern is silenced, what speech emerges in the margin? I propose “stratified silence” as a model: each layer of omission corresponds to a specific axis of power—linguistic, caste, gender, or state censorship.
3. Methodology: Reading the Palimpsest
Using Gadamerian hermeneutic circles, I treat archival gaps as interpretive horizons. Marginalia, strike-throughs, and blank pages are read as paratexts (Genette, 1997). Digital humanities tools—OCR error maps and whitespace analysis—quantify absence, revealing patterns invisible to the naked eye.
4. Case Studies
4.1 Firaq’s Redacted Ghazals: In the Gorakhpuri papers, 14 couplets are inked out with thick black bars. Infrared imaging reveals fragments criticizing Nehru’s secularism—silence as political survival.
4.2 Basu’s Censored Realism: The 1962 manuscript of Prajapati contains 47 pages removed by the publisher. Recovered drafts show explicit depictions of refugee sexuality—silence as moral policing.
4.3 Srinivasan’s Tamil Silence: 300 letters remain untranslated, addressed to British officials in English. The absence of Tamil originals suggests deliberate self-erasure to access power.
5. Stratified Silence: A Typology
| Layer | Mechanism | Example |
|---|---|---|
| State | Censorship | Basu’s removed pages |
| Linguistic | Untranslation | Srinivasan’s letters |
| Social | Self-censorship | Firaq’s inked couplets |
6. Conclusion
Archival silence is not a dead end but a threshold. By reading absence as text, we unearth subjugated knowledges that disrupt colonial narratives. This excavation demands a new scholarly ethic: to listen where the archive refuses to speak.
References
- Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge University Press.
- Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271–313). University of Illinois Press.
- Stoler, A. L. (2009). Along the Archival Grain. Princeton University Press.
Received: 10 August 2025 | Revised: 05 October 2025 | Accepted: 18 October 2025
DOI: 10.5390/excavation.2025.1.1.003
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