Material witnesses: Object-fiction and raw realism in Saadat Hasan Manto’s symbolic resistance

Abstract

This study examines how Saadat Hasan Manto’s short fiction stories employ everyday objects as narrative agents in ten of his Urdu short stories to reveal how material symbols destabilize linear temporality, normative dualisms, and political mythmaking. Building on Gadamerian hermeneutics and object‑oriented narratology, the analysis triangulates three frameworks: (1) the temporal dualism of Chronos (cyclical violence) and Aevum (ideological eternity), (2) phenomenological object studies (Merleau‑Ponty; Heidegger) highlighting how things embody absence and historical anxiety, and (3) paratextual contextualization by Gérard Genette through Manto’s Gañjē Fārishtē (Bald Angels) , and Letters to Uncle Sam. Textual selection is purposive, focusing on stories in which objects are thematically central and function to rupture narrative flow or symbolically articulate unspeakable experiences. The findings demonstrate that Manto’s thing‑stories operate as chronopolitical ruptures that resist both the erasure of traumatic history and the promise of transcendental closure. This object‑centric lens not only deepens our understanding of Manto’s symbolic realism but also offers a model for analyzing material‑mediated moral rupture in postcolonial literature.