Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2009 Mapping subjectivities: The cultural poetics of mobility & identity in South Asian diasporic literature Aparajita De West Virginia University Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation De, Aparajita, "Mapping subjectivities: The cultural poetics of mobility & identity in South Asian diasporic literature" (2009). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 2915. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/2915 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 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Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts & Sciences At West Virginia University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In English Literature Gwen Bergner, Ph.D., Chair Dennis Allen, Ph.D. Jonathan Burton, Ph.D. Ann Oberhauser, Ph.D. Lisa Weihman, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia 2009 Keywords: Cosmopolitanism, Cultural geography, Diaspora, Identity, South Asia, Transnationalism Copyright 2009 Aparajita De ABSTRACT Aparajita De My dissertation examines fiction and autobiography by diasporic South Asian women writers to analyze the processes of subject formation in the diaspora. Analyzing the literary expressions of Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Shauna Singh Baldwin, and Meena Alexander on contemporary diasporic identities, I examine the critical insights they offer to understanding subjectivity. I argue that subjectivity in the diaspora develops in response to the individual’s experience of location. By location I refer to both physical and ideological spaces the individual occupies over time. Examining subjectivity in the diaspora as an analytical and empirical category, I focus on the tactics and interventions enacted by diaspora characters for enabling survival in the diaspora. Thus, I explore subjectivity in the diaspora developing as a function of the space the individual inhabits, experiences, and responds to. My analysis illustrates that diaspora subjectivity is mediated, hybrid, relational, and representative of the tactical strategies developed by the subject, strategies both represented and enacted in the work of these writers. I argue that these strategies reflect the autonomic agency of the subject in response to their locations. My research responds to the insufficient scholarship on South Asian women writers who theorize diasporic subjectivity. At the same time, I critique the lacuna in postcolonial and cultural theory where either location or space are generically theorized but that overlook or subordinate the experiences of the human subject. I work, in short, towards a theory of subjectivity, agency, and responsibility that accounts for both the restrictions and the possibilities of social and empirical space for diaspora characters. Ultimately, my analysis of diaspora subjectivity underscores the modes of cultural survival sustaining the subject in diaspora locations. Page | iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation marks the effort and hard work of all those who have guided, supported, and encouraged me to produce better work. I want to take the opportunity of individually thanking each of my Committee members. My Chair, Gwen Bergner has been very challenging to work with. Her meticulous comments and eye for detail have immensely helped my work. She has helped me to write better. Thank you, Gwen! All my Committee members, Lisa Weihman, Dennis Allen, Jonathan Burton, and Ann Oberhauser have been very supportive of my work and without their generous and valuable advice this work would not be what it is. I want to especially thank Lisa for being so understanding during some of the most difficult periods of the dissertation. Dennis, who was always there to talk to me on the phone or extend valuable advice through email and in person which have helped me through the Ph.D program. I am honored to have known and worked with him. I want to extend my thanks to Ann, who was ever ready and enthusiastic with her books and ideas whenever I knocked at her door seeking any references. All in all, my committee is a community of people who encouraged me and honed my thoughts and ideas into the level where it is today. I want to thank West Virginia University Libraries and our amazing librarians who have helped me to locate sources, while tirelessly answering my questions about research ports and data base searches. They have provided me with the very best resources available here that makes my work what it is. I want to thank Kelly Diamond, Linda Blake, Jing Qiu, and John Hagen for all their support. I remain indebted to the Department of English and our staff and faculty members. Amanda Riley, Michelle Marshall, Mary Vasquez, Cindy Baniak, and Marsha Bissett have been very resourceful and efficient in the guidance they have provided throughout my graduate student life. I thank our department’s Chair, Dr. Donald E. Hall for the support and enthusiasm he has for every student in the department. I remain indebted to my parents Barun and Uma as without their inspiration and encouragement I would not have been able to pursue academics in the United States. I Page | iv want to thank my siblings, Rajiv and Sanghamitra and my nephew, Rajarshi and sister-in- law Maumita for their unending support and faith in me. I thank Nabendu for his support, confidence, and patience with me. Without him, this dissertation would not have been written. He is a man of few words but his encouragements provided sustenance during some of the toughest moments of my work. I want to mention my recently deceased father-in-law, Niranjan Pore who would have been the happiest with my achievement, who made international phone calls asking about the progress of my work while encouraging me to work harder and produce better work. Finally, I want to thank all of my friends and colleagues who have stood by me, supported, and encouraged me despite their own work. A special thanks to Sohinee Roy to whom I remain indebted for all her support, kindness, and encouragement. I want to thank Amrita Ghosh, Gargi, and Anthony Zias. They made graduate student life seem worry free and their unending support have steered me through. Special thanks go to Shampa Chatterjee, Krishna and Sukhamay Lahiri, and Srilata Ganguly (University of Pennsylvania) for their generous support and guidance. Finally, I want to thank all my teachers—on both sides of the Atlantic—who have ever taught me, for surely, without their beacon lights I would not have been able to find my calling. Aparajita De Morgantown, 2009 I dedicate this work to Nabendu Pore for all his patience, love, and encouragement during every moment of my life and work here. MAPPING SUBJECTIVITIES: THE CULTURAL POETICS OF MOBILITY & IDENTITY IN SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORIC LITERATURE APARAJITA DE WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, MORGANTOWN 2009 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION Mapping Subjectivities: The Cultural Poetics of Mobility & Identity in South Asian Diasporic Literature 1 ONE What’s In a Name? Tropes of Belonging & Identity in The Namesake 36 TWO Living in Umreekah: Dancing to Transnationalism with Queen of Dreams 65 THREE Inside the Tricolor: Mapping Belonging through Displacement in What the Body Remembers 97 FOUR Making Meanings, Suturing Contradictions: An Analysis of Fault Lines 131 FIVE Epilogue: Perceptions, Limits, and Optimisms 159 WORKS CITED 163 Mapping Subjectivities: The Cultural Poetics of Mobility & Identity in South Asian Diasporic Literature We have to manage to fold the line and establish an endurable zone in which to install ourselves, confront things, take hold, breathe—in short, think… to live with what would otherwise be unendurable. - Gilles Deleuze (113) In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, as the main character Ashima Ganguly nears the end of her pregnancy we are unassumingly led to the details of her culinary improvisations that help her connect to her Indian roots amidst her American realities. She poignantly exemplifies the immigrant angst, the nostalgia for home that immigration provokes, and the cultural negotiations immigrants make every moment of their lives to survive, as she goes through the simple ritual of making herself a snack. Ashima satisfies her cravings for a delicacy native to her homeland, Calcutta, by mixing rice krispies, peanuts, and spices. The mixture is a substitute for jhalmuri—the popular Bengali snack from puffed rice available through vendors in the footpaths and streets of Calcutta and at any home in India, “[O]n a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguly stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chili pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix” (Lahiri 1). Later in the novel we note Ashima's cultural negotiations—through food habits, language, and lifestyles—which are conditioned by her experiences of everyday life in America and her ability to forge belonging through strategies of mediation. In a way, her trivial gesture of concocting the snack illustrates her ability to forge her American realities (with rice krispies and a pregnancy without the support of her native family and community) with her Indian associations. These negotiations are relationally developed in response to location (both geographical and ideological) and illustrate the 1 autonomic ability of the immigrant subject to survive within cultures.