Power, Suffering, and the Ethics of Representation: A Critical Theory Reading of Mamun Hussain’s Literary Corpus

Mamun Hussain’s literary works occupy a distinctive position in contemporary Bangladeshi literature, combining clinical precision with deep ethical concern for social suffering. This article offers a critical interpretation of Hussain’s corpus through the framework of Critical Theory, incorporating insights from the Frankfurt School, postcolonial theory, and biopolitical analysis. It argues that Hussain’s fiction and essays function as a form of social diagnosis, exposing the structural mechanisms through which power, ideology, and institutional control produce normalized suffering in postcolonial Bangladesh. Drawing upon close readings of major texts including Hospital Bengal, Nikropolis, Human Pain: A Detailed Description, and Agenda of Armed Forces and Land Management Conflicts, the article demonstrates how Hussain constructs a literary ethics grounded in vulnerability, memory, and resistance. His narrative strategies—fragmentation, documentary realism, and stylistic restraint—disrupt ideological closure and foreground what Critical Theory terms “damaged life.” The study situates Hussain within broader debates on postcolonial disenchantment, the failure of modernity, and the politics of representation, arguing that his work constitutes a form of “negative humanism” that preserves human dignity without resorting to sentimental consolation or utopian illusions. Ultimately, this article positions Mamun Hussain’s literature as an ethical archive of contemporary Bangladesh, offering a powerful critique of domination while defending literature’s role as moral witness in contemporary Bangladesh, offering a powerful critique of domination while defending literature’s role as moral witness in conditions of systemic injustice.