Archival Anxiety and the Politics of Memory: A Decolonial Reading of Nadeem Aslam’s Season of the Rainbirds

Mubashar Altaf; Huma Batool

doi:10.22452/

Authors

Mubashar Altaf University of Sargodha
Huma Batool Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22452/

Keywords:

Memory Politics, Decolonial Critical Lens, Archive Anxiety, Epistemic Violence, Reimagining past

Abstract

Abstract

This paper explores archival anxiety and the politics of memory in Nadeem Aslam’s debut novel, Season of the Rainbirds (1993), through a decolonial critical lens. Set against the socio-political turbulence of 1980s Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq’s repressive regime, the novel centres on the accidental discovery of a mailbag lost in a train crash nineteen years earlier. These recovered letters function as a counter-archive—an unsanctioned repository of suppressed truths that threatens to destabilise the postcolonial ruling elite’s control over memory. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s (2002) theorisation of the archive as a product of power, exclusion, and epistemic violence, the paper argues that Aslam dramatises how postcolonial societies inherit and reproduce colonial structures of knowledge control. The ruling elite’s frantic efforts to intercept and suppress the letters expose their archival anxiety, while figures such as the postmaster and the marginalised character Zafri stage small but significant acts of resistance. The paper concludes that Season of the Rainbirds offers a literary counter-archive that critiques epistemic violence and reimagines the politics of memory from a decolonial perspective.

Author Biographies

Mubashar Altaf, University of Sargodha

Mubashar ALTAF is a Lecturer in English at the University of Sargodha, Pakistan, and a PhD Scholar in English Literature at Air University, Islamabad. He completed a research collaboration at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom (2024–2026). His research interests include decolonial studies, postcolonial and modern critical theory, cognitive poetics, conceptual metaphor theory, and Pakistani Anglophone literature. He has published several peer-reviewed articles on decoloniality, literary theory, and Pakistani Anglophone fiction in national and international journals.
Huma Batool, Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Dr. Huma Batool is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Air University, Islamabad. Her research spans the fields of cognitive linguistics, cognitive poetics, psycho-neurolinguistics, and language and communication disorders. She holds a PhD in English Linguistics from the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad. Her publications examine metaphor processing, embodied cognition, and linguistic impairments. She has contributed to various national and international journals in linguistics and cognitive studies.

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