Haunted Histories and Wounded Time: Subaltern Mourning and Postcolonial Resistance in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Abstract

This article examines Shehan Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida through the critical lenses of postcolonial theory and Derridean hauntology in order to explore how spectrality functions as a kind of historical critique and ethical resistance in post-conflict Sri Lanka. In the context of civil war, political repression, and forced forgetting, the book explores suppressed histories, silenced voices, and unresolved collective trauma through the ghost of the murdered photojournalist Maali Almeida. Drawing from Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology, the study argues that the novel subverts linear temporality through what is called "wounded time," a temporal condition in which the past persistently invades the present and rejects the closure or reconciliation imposed by narratives supported by the state. The analysis highlights the limitations of postcolonial transitional justice and the weakness of official historiography by demonstrating how the novel's haunting blurs the boundaries between presence and absence, life and death. By transforming the afterlife into a political arena where repressed truths, forgotten memories, and unacknowledged grief resurface, Maali's spectral journey becomes a sort of subaltern testimony. Photography and storytelling are counter-archival practices that preserve truth outside of institutional control and uphold the ethical necessity of remembrance. The article concludes by arguing that The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida presents a hauntopolitical vision in which remembering becomes a civic duty and mourning becomes an act of resistance. The novel reimagines postcolonial healing as a process that necessitates listening to history's ghosts rather than silencing them by emphasizing the voices of the deceased and vanished.