DIASPORA

Aparajita D. Hazarika

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DEFINITION

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to disperse

Forced
Voluntary
From homelands to new regions

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diasporic culture

1. Necessarily mixed
2. Amalgamation of two cultures
they have to negotiate two cultures after they
have arrived in a new geographical and cultural
context

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ROBIN COHEN:
A diasporic community live together in one
country
 theyacknowledge that “the old country” always
has some claim on their loyalty and emotions
 this notion is buried deep in language, religion,
custom or folklore-

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The members of a diasporic community
Are linked together with their past migration
history
and
a sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar
background

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Diasporic communities are created out of
the merging of narratives about journeys
from the ‘old’ country to the new

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People from the first generation of migrants
tend to recall the ‘old’ country more than
children born to migrant people.

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In Diaspora there is
a distinct Centre

from where their ancestors

originated

relation

Centre - Periphery Periphery

into which they dispersed

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The memory of home

Whether individual or communal

(egs: childhood landscapes, historical

events, people)

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Jhumpa Lahiri

“The question of identity is always a difficult one,

but especially for those who are culturally displaced,
as immigrants are who grow up in two worlds
simultaneously”.

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The Namesake (2006)

negotiates the space between two locations, cultures and

two generations

The novel tries to identify the sameness and differences

that define the self and the re-definition of the self due to a
transcultural, transnational drift

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Plot- Kolkata, India; New York city and various New York
state suburbs
The Namesake depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima
Ganguli,
two first-generation immigrants from West Bengal, India to
the United States,
and their American-born children Gogol and Sonia.

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The Russian connection, the use of a Russian
name and the problems of naming, unnaming
and

re-naming are fascinating aspects of this

diasporic novel.

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 AKAKY AKAKIEVICH
THE OVERCOAT BY NIKOLAI GOGOL

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The film chronicles Gogol Ganguly’s cross-cultural
experiences and his exploration of his Indian
heritage, as the story shifts between the United
States and India.

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Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel highlights
the trials, tensions, hybridity and the gradual
accommodation
leading to fluid identities that define diasporic
dilemma and transnationalism.

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FEATURES OF DIASPORIC
CULTURE/ LITERATURE

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Due to the displacement, Diaspora’s quest for
identity, a sense of inability to belong becomes all
the more difficult and desperate.

Diaspora's sense of loss becomes tragic when they

think of returning to their homeland.

The homes to which they want to return undergoes

complete transformation and turns out to be a
romantic illusion.

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It is this displacement which gives Diaspora
writing its peculiar qualities of loss and
nostalgia.

Alienation is a part of the experience of the

Indian Diaspora

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Diaspora writing becomes relevant biographical sketch of the
writers
Description of an immigrants ‘effort’ to belong to two places
and fails to belong to either place,
They try to preserve traces of old identity, while struggling to
acquire a new identity,
They lose both the identities in the process.

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Imaginary Homelands:

they are obliged to deal in broken mirrors,

some of fragments have been lost.

Rushdie

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The sense of alienation in a new society,
culture, land.

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An effort to retain features from the homeland-
rituals, language, forms of behaviour

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A reclamation of history of the homeland and
childhood spaces.

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A conscious attempt to assert ethnic identity in
terms of the homeland, while simultaneously
seeking acceptance/ assimilation in the new
cultures.

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 MAIN THEMES

i. Nostalgia, memory, ‘imaginary homelands’

i. Hybridities and new identities

i. Globalisation and cosmopolitanism

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 HYBRIDITY
Concept popularised by Homi Bhaba

It is the creation of new cultural forms and identities

as a result of the colonial encounter.

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Form of Hybridity:

Hybridity in post colonial societies can be in the

form of a retrieval/ revival of a pre-colonial past-
such as folk or tribal cultural forms and
conventions

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 FORM OF HYBRIDITY:

or to adapt contemporary artistic and social

productions
to present day conditions of globalisation,
multiculturalism and transnationalism.

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 Transnationalism

economic, political, and cultural processes that

extend beyond the boundaries of nation-states.

The concept of transnationalism suggests a

weakening of the control a nation-state has over its
borders, inhabitants, and territory.

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Increased immigration to developed countries
in response to global economic development
has resulted in multicultural societies where
immigrants are more likely to maintain contact
with their culture of origin and less likely
to assimilate.

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The clash of cultures produces something new such
as the

Fiction of Salman Rushdie

Wilson Harris(Caribbean)
Plays of Wole Soyinka(Nigeria)

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Hybridity Enables The Post Colonial Writer To
Negotiate The Dangers Of Cultural Binarism
a mode of thought predicated on stable
oppositions (as good and evil or male and female)
It is seen in post-structuralist analysis as an
inadequate approach to areas of difference;

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And
The urge to seek ‘pure’ cultural forms
It is a celebration of multiplicities
Identities are adapted from many sources and
not just from the colonial past.

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