Abstract:
This research aims to explore the ghostly materialities and phantasmal legacy that
haunts the collective psyche of the Iraqi people as recorded via the devastation and
subliminal changes occurring in the war-torn landscape within the chosen works of
fiction. The study would investigate the transformation of these places ravaged by war
into ghostly records that disrupt the temporal and spatial bounds. War leaves imprints
of violence and lasting scars on the consciousness of a country’s people and its
landscape; that becomes a breeding ground for apparitions and specters as the
hauntingness subsumes it. This paper would explore the two texts; Frankenstein in
Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi and The Corpse Exhibition by Hassan Blasim; under the
light Jo Frances Maddern and Peter Adey’s technique of mapping the ‘Spectro-
geographies’ by performing a content based textual analysis on the chosen texts. The
research would particularly look at the suffering of Iraqis within these texts and how
they are making sense of the constative inconstancy that has emerged out of the
ruination and turmoil that has visited the Iraqi land, the gothic nature of the war and its
several aftermaths. Through the notion of spectro-geography, the research would stress
on the landscape’s struggle to come at terms with its forever changed and constantly
altering phantasmic character and primal reality. The study will show new motifs,
symbols and literary features that have been used by Iraqi authors to put forth their
understanding of the trauma experienced as the voices hailing from the periphery. The
marginalized and subjugated voices from the Middle East are yet to be thoroughly
researched on. That, and these recently discovered theories would give a new dimension
to the theorizing and working of the post-war unconsciousness.
