S.

MANJULA
19PHD0055
INTERNAL FULL TIME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND LANGUAGES
VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
VELLORE-632007.
 REPRESSED SUBJECTIVITY & CREATIVE
IMAGINATION: AN ECOCRITICAL ANALYSIS
OF MUNNU: A BOY FROM KASHMIR
No. of images: 1723
Published: 2015.
sa
Malik Sajad
➔ Cartoonist
➔ Graphic Novelist
➔ Debut Novel= Munnu- A Boy from Kashmir.
➔ He lives in srinagar, kashmir. He studied Visual Art at Goldsmiths, University of
London.
➔ He has been working for various newspapers right from the age of 12. His
illustrations and stories have appeared in various local and International
publication.
➔ His debut novel Munnu-A boy from Kashmir won the “Verve Story teller of the
year” award.
 Other works:
Prior to publishing Munnu, Sajad wrote several short stories
documenting political crisis across South Asia such as
Identity card, The Posterman, Facebooked and Side effects
of Fairness cream
 Munnu- A Boy from Kashmir
Munnu revolves around a seven-year-old boy, who is
growing up in the Indian portion of Kashmir in the
backdrop of 1990s.
Munnu is an amazingly personal insight into everyday
life in kashmir. It opens up the story of the conflicted
land while also giving a close, warm-hearted portrait of
a boy’s childhood and coming-of-age.
 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

● Pramod K. Nayar (2016)“The Postcolonial Gothic:Munnu, Graphic Narrative and

terrors of Nation” emphasis on the postcolonial gothic’s principle features that
are present in Malik’s Munnu-A Boy from Kashmir.
● Sreyoshi Sarkar (2018) “The art of postcolonial Resistance and Multispecies story
telling in Malik Sajad’s Graphic Novel” comments on how Malik employs the
narrative form to de-familiarise the hegemonic story of Kashmir that is being
circulated.
● Amit Rahul Baishya(2018) “Endangered (and Endangering) species: Exploring the
Animacy Hierarchy in Malik Sajad’s Munnu ” explains the conceptual
arrangement of human, animal and other forms of non-humanness in orders of
value and priority in Malik Sajad’s graphic memoir.
CONT….

● Andrew Hock Soon Hg (2018) “Nationalism and Intangible effects of violence in

Malik Sajad’s Munnu” focuses on violence as main theme and on how violence is
represented through graphical strategies.
● Nandhini Chandra (2018) “The Fear of Iconoclasm: Genre and Medium
transformations from comic s to graphic novels in Amar Chitra Katha, Bhimayana,
and Munnu” criticizes Graphic Narratives for being so driven by metaphors, puns
and allegories and for being so decorative and artistic rather than being
narrative.
● Kavitha Daiya (2019) “South Asia in Graphic narratives ” talks briefly on the
development of Graphic Narratives in South Asian countries.
CONT...

● Amrita Singh (2017) “Inside Out: Autobiography, history and comic form in
Munnu- A Boy from Kashmir” elucidates on how the autobiographical narrative of
Malik brings out the history of Kashmir.
 RESEARCH GAP

From the review of literature, it is found that the researchers have

interpreted Malik Sajad’s graphic novel only from postcolonial and historical
perspectives. But a significant gap becomes noticeable in the fact that it has
not been interpreted from an ecocritical perspective and how the images or
visual technique has been used to convey the thoughts of the narrator
(violence against man and nature) to the readers.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS

➔ What is the role of visual analogues in portraying violence against

nature and mankind in Malik’s Munnu- A Boy from Kashmir?
➔ To what extent graphic novel as a literary art form allows Malik to
express the existential challenges of the people of Kashmir with
regard to the limits of their self-expression?
➔ What is the link between creative imagination and repressed
subjectivity in Malik’s Munnu- A Boy from Kashmir?
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.
Theoritical Framework:

Kress & Van Leeuwen’s Grammar of visual Design

Theory of Imagination & Creativity

Theory of Ecocriticism
Thank you