Scripting the Unwritten

Scripting the Unwritten: ‘Little’ History in Manjushree Thapa’s The Tutor of History

Recently the novelists from Nepal have moved from key events in the history of the nation to focus on those that may not have made a global impact. Manjushree Thapa’s The Tutor of History is an example at hand. The Tutor of History, a story of poor and downtrodden people is a subalternist critique of Nepali politics and history. The characters drawn in the book are from the grass root level where they run an unnoticed life between hope and frustration. By presenting the bleak life of ordinary people, Manju is redrawing the boundaries of history through marginal landscape. So, the text is a history of subalterns who lived during 1990s and remained unnoticed in Nepali history written academically. To prove this hypothesis, this paper will draw basic insights from Deepesh Chakravarty, Ranjit Guha, Gayatri Spivak, Michel Foucault and Hayden White[1].

[1] I will be taking basic insights of subaltern historiography that flourished first in India under the leadership of Ranjit Guha, Deepesh Chakravarty, Gyan Pandey and others. Spivak’s deconstructive analysis of traditional historiographical mode will be the main focus. Foucault’s revisionist mode of history and Hayden White’s notion of ‘history as text’ will be discussed.

(Full Research Paper is available only on request)

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