Violent Dis-Placements: Natural and Human Violence in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

This article uses theories of space and place to explore the connections between natural and human violence in Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006). By synthesizing concepts from the work of Bill Ashcroft, Benedict Anderson, Yi-Fu Tuan, Homi K. Bhabha, Michel de Certeau, and others, I develop a theory of “placeness” that involves subjective attachment to a physical location, a range of emotional and intellectual investments that convert “empty” space to place. In Desai's novel, however, this transformation is reversible through violence. Just as nature undermines edifices, so too do humans use violence in order to degrade place to space in the hope of rebuilding place according to a different agenda.