Temporal Dislocation and the Poetics of Memory: A Phenomenological Reading of Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day

Abstract

This study examines the issue of temporal dislocation in Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day (1980) via the phenomenological lens of memory. A lot of research has focused on issues like family alienation, Partition trauma, and postcolonial identity. This study is different because it looks at how Desai builds a poetic structure of memory that goes beyond chronological time. The paper looks at how memory affects Bim’s reality and identity through the lens of phenomenological philosophy, especially the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This article makes the case that Clear Light of Day stages memory not just as a way to remember the past, but as an existential space that shapes consciousness and meaning. It does this by closely analysing the text and critically engaging with existing scholarship.