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@article{190735,
        author = {Scenario. M and Dr. S Yasmin},
        title = {Between Silence and Survival: Postcolonial Trauma, Arrested Selfhood, and Tribal Lives in South India},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {8},
        pages = {2943-2948},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=190735},
        abstract = {The article critically examines the postcolonial reconfiguration of self, subjectivity, and identity through the theoretical lens of subaltern studies and the genre of the Bildungsroman, with particular emphasis on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. It interrogates the disjunction between the rhetoric of universal rights and their partial, often compromised, implementation in postcolonial societies marked by historical domination, gender inequity, and ideological violence. Drawing on key postcolonial, Marxist, poststructuralist, and feminist thinkers such as Spivak, Fanon, Bhabha, Said, Althusser, and Slaughter, the study argues that colonial histories produce an arrested and fragmented self, necessitating alternative narrative forms to articulate subjectivity. The paper situates the postcolonial Bildungsroman as a genre of survival rather than harmonious development, foregrounding silence, mimicry, hybridity, and resistance as central modes of becoming. Through a close reading of Kambili’s journey in Purple Hibiscus, the study demonstrates how enforced silence evolves into reflective agency within a hostile patriarchal and postcolonial environment. Ultimately, the paper contends that postcolonial female Bildung redefines formation as an ongoing process of negotiation and self-reclamation, transforming marginality into a space of critical consciousness and creative possibility.},
        keywords = {Postcolonialism, Subalternity, Female Bildungsroman, Silence and Voice.},
        month = {January},
        }