CAN AI REMEMBER? READING NAMITA GOKHALE'S THINGS TO LEAVE BEHIND IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

Our understanding of human knowledge, communication, and cultural transmission has been transformed by the rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence. As AI produces language similar to humans, question arises regarding the nature of memory and its relationship to human experiences. This paper explores these dynamics by closely reading Namita Gokhale's novel Things to Leave Behind, set within a period of significant social transformation in colonial and early postcolonial India. It presents memory as a dynamic, relational, and culturally embedded process shaped by family histories, gendered experience, social structures, and inherited traditions. Rather than functioning as a static archive of past events, memory in the novel is continuously reconstructed through narrative, affect, and lived experience. In contrast, Artificial Intelligence operates through statistical pattern recognition and data-driven generation. By placing Gokhale's novel in dialogue with the age of artificial intelligence, this paper argues that literature offers a critical framework for distinguishing between information storage and human meaning-making. It highlights how literary memory is embedded in consciousness, cultural continuity, and intergenerational transmission. It aims not to argue that AI lacks memory, but instead interrogates how literary narratives complicate dominant assumptions about what it means to remember. Ultimately, it contributes to interdisciplinary discussions on literature and technology by showing how a contemporary Indian fiction can illuminate evolving conceptions of cognition, narrative, and human experience in the age of AI.