Metaphors of Wound and Repair: Decolonial Healing in Nadeem Aslam’s Fiction

Abstract

Colonial modernity continues to shape the political, cultural, and epistemic realities of postcolonial societies long after the formal end of empire. This study examines how Nadeem Aslam’s fiction metaphorically diagnoses these enduring legacies as wounds and imagines repair through compassion, hybridity, and relational ethics. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and extended by Kövecses, the analysis explores the metaphorical architecture across Aslam’s five novels—Season of the Rainbirds (1993), Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), The Wasted Vigil (2008), The Blind Man’s Garden (2013), and The Golden Legend (2017). The study identifies a coherent repertoire of pathological metaphors—POSTCOLONIAL SOCIETY IS A DISEASED BODY, EXILE IS A WOUND, LAND IS WOUNDED BODY, DOGMA IS BLINDNESS, and REPAIR IS HEALING—that expose the binary logic and hierarchical epistemology of colonial modernity. Reading these metaphors through Quijano’s concept of the Colonial Matrix of Power and Mignolo’s formulation of coloniality as the darker side of modernity, the paper argues that Aslam’s oeuvre forms a narrative arc from metaphorical diagnosis to decolonial prescription. By integrating cognitive linguistics with decolonial thought, the study demonstrates that metaphor in Aslam’s fiction operates not merely as stylistic ornamentation but as an epistemic intervention that reconfigures perception, contests colonial binaries, and reimagines pluriversal societies.

Keywords: Binary Logic, Conceptual Metaphor Theory; Colonial Modernity; Decolonial Thinking, Metaphors of Wound and Repair; Postcolonial condition; Western Modernity