Place-Identity, People, and Existence: Reorienting Heideggerian 'Dasein' toward Postmodern Literary Geography of Allahabad City in Neelum Saran Gour's Select Narratives

Abstract

abstract:This article curates an interdisciplinary convergence of the "place" concept that envisions a postmodern literary city as a proximal zone of ephemeral human experiences with mutual interdependency rather than a modernist homogeneous galore of dystopian or utopian construct. Illustrating upon the alignment of simulation in the literary city of Allahabad (an Indian city that was recently renamed Prayagraj) in Indian English author Neelum Sara Gour's Select Writings, this article will examine Gour's spatial representation of Allahabad as a meaningful construction of its inhabitants subjective and collective experiences without ignoring its pertaining state in shaping human experiences. Such inseparability between place and human experience foregrounds the concept of place-identity as a "substructure of a person's self-identity," which resonates at the core of people's existence or "being there," that is dasein (Martin Heidegger, 1962) and theoretically positions an individual within "world of references," briefly delineating upon nuanced emergence of humanist tradition in place research and its current epoch in contemporary concept of dasein toward postmodern literary geography, interrogating the triad of place-identity, people, and existence, blurring the epistemological debate between identity and existence to the complementary nature of both in terms with place.