“Against Forgetting”

Abstract

This paper investigates the witnessing and memory-making functions of the poetry of Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali. Against the backdrop of prevailing institutionalized constraints on journalism and mass media reportage by a postcolonial nation-state in a conflict-ridden territory, this paper shows how Shahid’s poetry fills the lacuna and serves not only as an archive of collective memories of his people, or witness to their sufferings, but also engages the critical as well as emotional faculties of a wider audience to elicit empathies and garner committed solidarities. It throws light on the complexity of witnessing with respect to the poet’s positionality as he bore witness to the occurrences of his homeland while being physically distant from it and yet offering a substitution to news, especially in the present times when journalism, in Kashmir, has failed in its obligation to represent the experiences of the ordinary people. The study primarily focuses on Shahid’s 1997 collection, The Country Without a Post Office, for its investigation of the witnessing functions of his poetry.