Silence as Narrative Agency: Reconfiguring the Unsaid in Contemporary Indian English Fiction

Abstract

This paper advances an original theoretical proposition: that silence in contemporary Indian English fiction operates not as absence or mere omission, but as a deliberate narrative agency that actively constructs meaning, resistance, and identity. Drawing upon a selective reading of works by Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, and the lesser-examined fiction of Anuradha Roy, the study reconceptualises narrative gaps, ellipses, and withheld speech as sites of subaltern articulation and postcolonial negotiation. Moving beyond conventional postcolonial and feminist frameworks that treat silence primarily as oppression, this research synthesises insights from narrative theory, affect studies, and decolonial thought to argue that the unsaid functions as a productive force—capable of disrupting linear historiography, challenging epistemic authority, and generating alternative affective communities. The analysis demonstrates how authors strategically deploy silence to encode trauma, cultural hybridity, and gendered experience without reducing them to spectacle. Ultimately, the paper proposes a methodology of “listening to the gaps” as an innovative critical practice for literary inquiry in Indian English studies, offering a pathway that is both theoretically rigorous and ethically attentive to the politics of representation.