MEMORY AND THIRDSPACE IN NADEEM ASLAM’S THE GOLDEN LEGEND

Abstract

This study draws on Foucauldian concept of heterotopia and Soja’s Thirdspace to read Nadeem Aslam’s novel The Golden Legend. Placing heterotopia within the Pakistani sociopolitical context, it examines how Aslam uses certain spaces as heterotopias or Thirdspace, allowing his characters to form mental and physical alliances to counter the hostility of outside spaces. The novel shows that these spaces can be gender-based domestic spaces of intimacy and agency, palimpsestic urban spaces, ritualistic or religious spaces, real-and-imagined spaces of historical significance, and spaces of continuum of memory. Taken together, they can be read as counterspaces or sites of resistance, symbolising possibility and beauty in the face of brutality and oppression. The study offers an intersection between memory studies and spatial studies, recontextualising Foucault’s heterotopia and Soja’s Thirdspace in the South Asian setting.