The Uncanny in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand: Subverting the Reality

Abstract

This paper explores Geetanjali Shree’s postmodern novel Tomb of Sand which falls in the liminal space between the real and the fantastic. Her novel interrogates the relevance of borders and boundaries; not only the geographical and psychological borders in post-partition India but borders defining gender identities, human and non-human worlds, familiar and strange. Shree provides a feminist lens to grasp the concept of Freud’s theory of the uncanny. Freud in his essay The Uncanny explains that the uncanny is not something unfamiliar but the familiar which is kept hidden or repressed. He explores the various dimensions of the uncanny like animism, magic, déjà vu, doubling, repetition in thoughts and language, fear of castration, queerness and return to the maternal body. Geetanjali Shree underscores how the feeling of uncanny can be associated with dissonance and strangeness in moving beyond or challenging the socially constructed habits and comportments of gendered bodies. The feeling of being out of sorts with one’s own body, breaking down boundaries and rules constructed by society, challenging the normative ideal and unearthing what has been silenced in culture, engenders the feeling of uncanny.