Hieroglyphs and Broken Links

This article argues for a movement away from narrative forms as a source for studying Partition and its legacy of ‘Partition effects', proposing instead that Partition studies examine non-narrative forms of cultural production. It begins this task by examining the ‘remediation’, or visual quotation, of script within Pakistani visual art. Script – readable and unreadable – becomes a site of trauma and memorialization that reveals the affective history of post-Partition Pakistan, specifically that of Karachi and Sindh. By analysing and historicizing examples of remediated script, this article espouses a post-Partition cultural studies that privileges primary material from Pakistan over that from India.