The Traumatic Self in the Inclusive Exclusion Politics of Democracy

The Traumatic Self in the Inclusive Exclusion Politics of Democracy - investigates the multiple discourses that besiege the missing of P. Rajan who was politically executed during the National Emergency of 1975 in India that facilitated to construct a presence in his absence for the collective psyche of the state of Kerala. These discourses around his disappearance deserve special attention as it loudly enunciates the brutality exhibited by the State towards a fellow being, the unrelenting silence of the authorities, the sheer helplessness of a victim's family and scars that do not heal with time. Many analogies can be uncovered while reading the 'Rajan case' and the National Emergency in India along with Giorgio Agamben's concept of the state of exception. The book reads the episode of Rajan case beside Agamben's outlook on the form-of-life and Michel Foucault's observation on biopolitics. It also concentrates on the trauma left by a phase in India's democratic politics on a family, and particularly on a father who stood as a microcosm for India at large that endured the pain of losing a kin to police brutality.