Diasporic Literature

Abstract: Diasporic literature is concerned with depiction of diverse experiences of the dispersed people starting with their displacement and dislocation to their translations and transformation in the unfamiliar situations. It is the translations and transgressions that are often addressed by the tern diasporic rebirth that signifies the experience of the diasporic self from ‘unsettling’ to ‘resettlement’. It is perceived in the achievement of hybridization, development of multiculturalism and transnational sense of the diasporas. In fact, the journey of the culturally shocked diaspora from the state of dislocation to that of a transnational-multicultural-hybrid-resurrected self speaks volumes for diasporic success as against all odds of

While the old diasporas resigned their fate in the host land with stoic endurance, the new diasporas accept and undergo translation several times; in other words, they are reborn time and again. In this respect, all sorts of trials and tribulations, anxiety and suffering, trauma and culture shock turn up as blessings in disguise for the new diaspora. In fact, the experience of the diasporic self from ‘unsettling’ to ‘resettlement’ is a journey of diasporic rebirth that is perceived / showcased in the achievement of hybridization, development of multiculturalism and transnational sense of the diasporas. The terms as used in postcolonial discourse are highly relative since they signify ‘trans-cultural forms’, ‘intercultural space’ and the space of ‘in-betweenness’. Hybridity is the fusion of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ that reduces the sharp dualistic thinking by bridging up the colonizer and the colonized. In this connection, Bhaba aptly observes that “Hybridity is the sign of the productivity of colonial power” (159). Hybridity contests the colonial view of the native as ‘subaltern’. In fact, the postcolonial subject with access to various material and academic developments of the globalised world achieves a hybrid identity and it is in this respect Diaspora as a postcolonial subject is no

Given the fact that postmodern identity is always in a flux, Bhaba challenges the essentialist notion of identity. His notion of the third space is an ambivalent site that itself challenges any ‘primordial unity or fixity’. To him, the third space initiates ‘new signs of identity’ (Location 1) and displaces the histories that constitute it. In Bhaba’s scheme of things, all forms of culture constantly undergo ‘translation and negotiation’ to constitute hybridity (Rutherford 211). Viewed from this perspective, diasporic negotiation between two cultures of home and host land strongly indicates cultural hybridity. Rushdie’s views on diasporic identity can be said to both counter and supplement the concept of hybridity. He observes that identity of the diasporic person is ‘plural and partial’ and that diasporas are ‘translated men’ who ‘straddle two cultures’ (Rushdie, Imaginary 17, 15). His observation highlights the diasporic negotiations of identity, the ‘in-between’ space and transnational characteristics of the diasporic