Reflexive Identity Construction in South Asian American Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.42.2021.261-281Keywords:
identity construction, self-reflection, cultural hybridity, Indian diaspora, South Asian American literatureAbstract
Cultural identity in contemporary diasporic communities is dynamic, multifaceted, and cyclical. In the age of reflexive modernity, it is imperative to think about new ways of conceptualizing the experience of individuals straddling multiple geographies. A model of identity for such individuals should not only explain the plurality of “being” but also the fluidity of “becoming.” In this article, the question of multiple and shifting identities of the four main characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s intergenerational novel, The Namesake, is explored using an interdisciplinary model from the field of business management based on Giddens’ theorization of reflexivity. The inward reflexive relationship between the “self” and the “other” through the discursive articulation of the ontological journey of the novel’s characters highlights the complex nature of diasporic identity construction.
Downloads
References
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Polity, 2000.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Bhattacharya, Atanu. “Everything Is There: Relocating the Diasporic Space in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreters of Maladies.” Interpreting Indian Diasporic Experience, edited by Kavita A. Sharma, et al., Creative Books, 2004, pp. 141–50.
Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, 1996.
Chakraborty, Madhurima. “Adaptation and the Shifting Allegiances of the Indian Diaspora: Jhumpa Lahiri’s and Mira Nair’s ‘The Namesake(s)’.” Literature/Film Quarterly: Salisbury University, vol. 42, no. 4, 2014, pp. 609–21.
Friedman, Jonathan. Cultural Identity and Global Process. SAGE Publications, 1994.
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Polity, 1991.
Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Diaspora and Visual Culture, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff, Routledge, 2000, pp. 21–33.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell, 1990.
Jain, Shobhita. “Women’s Agency in the Context of Family Networks in Indian Diaspora.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no. 23, 2006, pp. 2312–16.
Katrak, Ketu H. “The Aesthetics of Dislocation: Writing the Hybrid Lives of South Asian Americans.” The Women’s Review of Books, vol. 19, no. 5, 2002, pp. 5–6, JSTOR, doi:10.2307/4023785.
Kirby, Alan. Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture. Continuum, 2009.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Lal, Vinay. Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy. Pluto Press, 2002.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Time and the Other. Translated by Richard A. Cohen, Duquesne UP, 1987.
Lindgren, Monica, and Nils Wåhlin. “Identity Construction among Boundary-crossing Individuals.” Scandinavian Journal of Management, vol. 17, 2001, pp. 357–77, doi:10.1016/S0956-5221(99)00041-X.
Maalouf, Amin. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Penguin Books, 2003.
Mathews, Gordon. Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket. Routledge, 2000.
Mishra, Krushna Chandra. “Identity and Naming Culture in The Namesake.” Jhumpa Lahiri Critical Perspectives, edited by Nigamananda Das, Pencraft International, 2008, pp. 164–70.
Nicholson, Linda. Identity Before Identity Politics. Cambridge UP, 2008.
Niezen, Ronald. A World Beyond Difference: Cultural Identity in the Age of Globalization. Blackwell, 2004.
Pal, Adesh. Theorizing and Critiquing Indian Diaspora. Creative Books, 2004.
Richards, Rashna Wadia. “Love, Desi Style: Arranged Marriage and Translational Mobility in Mira Nair’s The Namesake.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 2017, pp. 64–80, doi:10.3138/ CJFS.26.1.2017-0004.
Satchidanandan, K. “That Third Space: Interrogating the Diasporic Paradigm.” India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 2, 2002, pp. 50–57.
Song, Min Hyoung. “The Children of 1965: Allegory, Postmodernism, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 53, no. 3, 2007, pp. 345–70, doi:10.1215/0041462X-2007-4001.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors retain publishing rights and grant ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies right of first publication.
Simultaneously, all articles and reviews published in ES Review until nº 43 are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) while those published from nº 44 onwards will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), by which others are allowed to share and use their work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
In addition, ES Review allows authors to arrange additional contracts for the non-exclusive publication of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. In such a case, authors are required to approach the editor(s)/publisher to request permission.
