Identity in Postcolonial Diasporic Literature

American, Caribbean and Indian Experiences

 Introduction

Postcolonialism as a new discipline retains a high complexity from its diverse nature.

The term ‘postcolonialism’ (or post-colonialism), has been the subject of heighted debates in

the field of cultural studies. The prefix 'post' has been taken for both 'after', and 'counter'; in the

first case to designate all literature that has emerged right after the experience of colonialism in

the once-colonized nations, while in the latter case, to designate a movement, a counter -

discourse to the narrative of imperialism that is initiated primarily by the once-colonized elite.

Bill Ashcroft et al., however, use the term in a much wider sense, namely to mean “all culture

affected by imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day” (Ashcroft

et.al 2)1 . This definition has managed to settle most of the debate about the term, but not all of

it. Ann McClintock and Aijaz Ahmed do not accept the use of the term wholeheartedly. Ahmed

considers that using “‘postcolonial criticism’ privileges as primary the role of colonialism as

the principle of structuration in that [the once-colonized] history” (cited in Childs and Willia ms

8)2 . It is as though the history of those nations started with colonialism. McClintock, however,

criticizes the term’s designation of an 'after-colonialism'. She considers the term to be

‘prematurely celebratory’ as colonialism is still at play in the once-colonized world.

The present day diaspora offer a significant example of the aftermath of colonialis m.

The complexity of the identity formation of the postcolonial diaspora invites a close

examination. This paper seeks to comparatively study the aspect of identity in postcolonia l

diaspora literature from a postcolonial perspective. It is hardly doubtful the role of colo nial

experience in the formation of the identity of the once-colonized. The colonial experience

1 Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial
Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. PDF. 2

2
Childs, Peter, and Patrick Williams. An Introduction to Post-colonial Theory. London: Prentice Hall/Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1997. Print.
caused a rupture in the self-identification of the once-colonized, eradicated and denigrated their

pre-colonial identities, and rendered them ever-struggling for new-identities. The debate about

the identity of the once colonized, therefore, is caught between a constructivist stand, which

claims that the identity of the diaspora has never been “one and the same”, and an essentialist

perspective, which sees identity as unchanging as it is related to an existing “essence”; the latter

perspective advocates “authenticity”, while the former holds to a fluid model of identity. Both

stands are explored to test their validity in the course of this paper.

It is in the literature of the diaspora that the clearest manifestation of the crisis of identity

formation could be found. Throughout this paper, we attempt to examine works from the three

different genres of literature, namely, poetry, prose, and a play. For the first genre, Dereck

Walcott’s poem, “A Far Cry from Africa”, 3 is examined to inspect the double inflection of the

Caribbean identity, an identity which is a direct outcome of the experience of colonialis m..

Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, “The Third and Final Continent”4 , is examined, as well, to show

the process of alienation and estrangement which results from the experience of displaceme nt..

Hanif Kureishi’s play, “The Black Album”5 , however, provides a more complex image of the

nature of the identity of the diaspora; it is an identity which is marked by a deep uncertainty

and aporia in the time of globalization and religious propaganda. The three works are examined

comparatively to emphasize the ahistoricity of the crisis of identity that results from

colonialism.

Using the postcolonial theory throughout the paper will enable us to study the process

by which colonialism has been a shaping factor of identity in the postcolonial literatures, the

subject-matter of our analysis. Being an interdisciplinary field, postcolonial theory allows for a

3
Dereck, Walcott. “A Far Cry from Africa”, in Dereck Walcott Collected Poems, 1962.
4 Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third and Final Continent”, in Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladie, 1999

5 Hanif, Kureichi, The Black Album, 2010

diverse study of the issue of identity by situating it amid an amalgamation of different fields,

discourses and critical insights that are often directed towards the oppressed and the

marginalized.

The wide range of theory that has been recently added to postcolonial theory makes it

even harder to single out a reference. For the sake of relevance, however, a number of works

and critics will be considered in the research. The Australian trio Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin’s

influential and widely known works The Empire writes back: Theory and Practice in

Postcolonial Literatures and Postcolonial Studies. The Key Concepts will be used througho ut

the research. Also, Childs and Williams’ An Introduction to post-colonial theory will also form

a basic reference for the model of postcolonial theory used in this research.

The method that will be used in this research is qualitative, depending on the

interpretation of a number of secondary sources as well as the primary sources. Investiga ting

identity and identity- formation necessitates a keen analysis of the works and the characters

within them.

The research consists of two main parts. The first part includes three main headings,

which deal respectively with the essentialist discourses of identity, the anti-essentialist and

modern discourses of identity and the hybridity and diaspora questions. In the second part, the

validity of the aforementioned theories is tested on the three works we have chosen to work on.

In the first heading, entitled “Dual Identities, Conflicting Loyalties”, the problematic of double

identification is explored. Here, we scrutinize the double identity with which the diaspora are

inflected, the identity of their origins and that of their host lands. In the second heading, under

the title “Essentially Hybrid”, we attempt to investigate the way the characters in the works

analyzed try to adapt to the new culture and identity, by resorting at times to “essentialist”

understandings of their identities of origins, and at other times, by negotiating with the identity

and culture of the host land, and thus, developing a hybrid model of identity. The last heading
of the practical part, titled “Postcolonial Diasporas: The Legacy of Colonialism”, deals, firstly,

with the aftermath of colonialism and how it functions as a shaping factor of the identity of the

diaspora, and, secondly, with the commonalities which the different diasporas discussed have.

It is, therefore, clear the extent to which colonial experience has shaped the identity of

diaspora. The identity of the diaspora cannot, then, be discussed in the light of neither the

essentialist nor the constructivist theories alone. A negotiation of both models of identities

forms the basic situation of the diaspora, and we hope that this claim becomes clearer as we

proceed with the analysis of the works chosen.

 Chapter One
Essentialism and Anti-essentialism in
the Colonial Discourse.
 1. Essential identities and Colonial Discourse

One of the most remarkable achievements of colonialism, it might be argued, is its capability

to shape whole nations in the image that serves the colonial powers, without the colonial

subjects being aware of that process. The internalization of the identities shaped by the colonial

empires causes the colonial subject to forever feel alienated from themselves. One of the main

strategies through which the colonial powers inscribe such identities in the colonial subjects is

by way of essentialzing certain characteristics to the “natives”. The colonial discourse is loaded

with these essentialist claims and sweeping generalizations, which, along with shaping a

fragmented and alienated identity for the colonial subjects, have a lasting effect on the identity

of the once colonized. In this chapter, the aim is to look into the nature of essentialism and the

way it had been traditionally conceived of, as well as the way it has been propagated and used

by the imperial powers to conquer and form the “other”.

1.1. The Essentialist Discourse of Identity.

To begin a discussion about identity as it has been defined and structured traditionally in

essentialist terms, it is a must to define what we mean here by ‘essentialism’. As has been

defined by Tope Omoniyi, “essentialism is the philosophy behind labelling any number of

normative characteristics or practices as constituting the core of an individual or group which

are then used to define them and held to be true of all members of the group” (16) 6 . Essentialis m

then is the belief that certain characteristics reside at the core of a certain individual or group

of people, a core unchangeable and vital for the self-definition of the aforementioned entities.

Diana Fuss also defines essentialism as “a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariab le

and fixed properties which define the "whatness" of a given entity” (xi) 7 . Defining the

6 Tope Omoniyi, and Goodith White. The Sociolinguistics of Identity. London: Continuum, 2006. PDF.16

7 Diana Fuss. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989. PDF. xi
“‘whatness’ of a given entity” entails by necessity the exclusion of all ‘other’ entities that do

not conform to or correspond with those properties. It is an exclusion of difference.

The essentialist discourse of identity tends to posit identity as having an objective and

unalterable core, which is inherent in and defines individuals. This tradition, which is mostly

derived from the conventions of structuralism8 and Enlightenment, is also reiterated in Stanley

Aronowitz’s “Reflecltions on identity”. In this essay, Aronowitz contends that “the older

theories tended to posit ‘society’ and the ‘individual’ as fixed”( 115) 9 . According to this view,

individuals are believed to have an unchanging defining faculty, a core quality or an essence

that makes possible their classification within certain definite categories. Examples of these

essences are: gender, race, nationality, or ethnicity. These qualities, as is obvious, are often

conspicuous and external. Amin Maalouf furthers this idea of the identification that is based on

external factors; “Identity is in the first place a matter of symbols, even of appearances”. These

external factors allow members of the same ‘tribe’ to both recognize each other, and the ‘Other’

(120)10 .

Stuart Hall further reflects on the idea of an old discourse of identity that brought forth

an understanding of identity as fixed in an ever changing world. By invoking the notion of the

Cartesian subject11 , Hall emphasized the domination of a fixed perspective on identity in

8 In Sociolinguistics of Identity, Omoniyi notes: “There has been a movement away from structuralism's notions
of identity as 'static' or 'essential' in the sense in which variationists such as Labov (1966) and Trudgill
(1974) used it with reference, for instance, to the distribution of individuals and groups into social classes
(13). Structuralism’s conception of cultural identity is based upon a binary opposition, in which one
culture is posited as being superior, while the other as being essentially inferior.

9 Aronowitz, Stanley. "Reflections On Identity". The Question of Identity. John Rajchman. New York: Routlege,
1995. PDF. 115

10 Amin Maalouf. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong . New York: Arcade, 2001. PDF. 115

11 In Postcolonial Studies: the Key Concepts, Ashcroft et al. maintain that “the Cartesian claim Cogito ergo cum
(I think therefore I am) was the basis for the stress on the individual consciousness and the centrality of
the idea of the human subject in the dominant intellectual discourse of the eight eenth and nineteenth
centuries” (73). This further emphasizes the Eurocentric nature of essentialist discourse.
Western philosophy. Moreover, authenticity worked as a defence strategy against the constant

changes that are taking place in the world. Hall suggests that the old discourse of identity

“contains the notion of the true self, some real self inside there, hiding inside the husks of all

the false selves that we present to the rest of the world. It is a kind of guarantee of

authenticity.”(42)12

The old logic of identity, therefore, considers the return to an authentic culture, a certain

determined and determining origin, a defining feature of the individual. It also determines our

perception of both the “inside and the outside, of the self and other, of the individual and society,

of the subject and the object” (Hall 43), in a stable ever-fixed set of principles It categorizes us

within a certain group with which we affiliate, and to whose standards we conform. Hall

remarks that these categories, which are inscribed within what he calls collective identities fix

the essentialist discourse and perception of the self, “These collective identities stabilized and

staged our sense of ourselves. That logic of identity that seemed so confident at the beginning

of my talk, was in part held in place by these great collective social identities”(13).13

The essentialist discourse of identity, as has already been suggested, tends to affiliate the

individual’s identity with an unchanging core quality, which in turn suggests a self-enclosed

universe, wherein difference is not tolerated and even more dangerously, considered as a threat

to the oneness of the individual’s identity.

1.2. Essentialism and Colonial Discourse on Identity

As has been noted earlier, the essentialist discourse of identity posits identity as being fixed and

related to a number of definite characteristics and properties by which individuals and groups

are identified, or given an identity. In this regard, it is useful to invoke the four notions of

12 Stuart Hall. "Old And New Identities, Old And New Ethnicities". In D. King Culture, globalization, and the
world-system: contemporary conditions for the representation of identity. Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press, 1997. PDF. 42-43

13 Stuart Hall. "Identity and Difference." Identity and Difference: Critical Statements. Web. Mar. 2016.
essentialism mentioned by Anne Phillips. The first is based upon ascribing a number of

characteristics to everyone included within a certain category (Phillips 47) 14 . This implies an

act of overgeneralization and reductionism. The discourse of Orientalism is a clear example of

the totalizing conception of the identity of the ‘other’. Edward Said traces a set of Orientalist

generalizations in Lamartine’s travel narratives. He argues that Lamartine’s political motivatio n

directed and undermined his representation of the orient, “From being a traveller and pilgrim in

real time and space, Lamartine has become a transpersonal ego identifying itself with the whole

of Europe” (178-179). Following a geopolitical agenda, Lamartine “reduced [the whole orient]

to a few echoes in his pompous generalizations” (Said 179). Therefore, Phillips remarks, “it is

unlikely that the choice of characteristics is entirely random” (ibid. 7); in other words, there are

agendas behind every essentialist representation and identification of the other.

The second notion of essentialism is founded upon the attribution of a certain set of

properties “to the category, in ways that naturalize or reify what may be socially constructed”

(Phillips 1); that is, the category is the one characterized by certain properties and not

individuals, so that individuals belonging to that category are directly associated with those

properties. Frantz Fanon dwells on this fact of belonging to a certain group or category and how

it positions and identifies the individual:

When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is
to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species. In the colonies the
economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you
are white, yon are white because you are rich. (40)15

Belonging to the white race (the colonizer) is directly associated with a position of superiority,

while all the others are associated with all the kinds of backwardness and evil. This discourse

14 Anne Phillips. "What's Wrong with Essentialism?" Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 11.1
(2010): Web. 47-60. 26 Mar. 2016

15 Franz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 1965. PDF. 40
naturalizes and fixes socially and historically constructed identities, and renders the conditio ns

of their formation obfuscated.

The third and fourth notions of essentialism are a critique to the two aforementio ned

ones, the reason for which they are dealt with more extensively in the second chapter of this

thesis.

The colonial discourse is informed by the oversimplification and reductionism of the

essentialist logic of identity in its quest to define the ‘other’ and proclaim it as inferior to

colonial authorities. Mathew Liebmann remarks that:

Essentialist discourses reduce complex heterogeneous structures to a supposed inner truth or

essence and function within colonial regimes to reinforce hegemonic control over colonized
peoples, inscribing inferiority upon them by controlling the dominant modes of representation.
(73)16

The essentialist discourse of identity provided the colonial powers with multiple justificatio ns

for their expansionist aspirations. These justifications stem mainly from Christian beliefs that

associated “blackness with the descendants of Ham, Noah’s bad son, and with the forces of

evil” (Loomba 105)17 . Relating certain traits of the colonized people with backwardness and

cannibalism, the colonial authorities found the right justification for their colonialism, as a form

of ‘civilizing mission’. By constructing what Foucault terms a ‘regime of power’ about the

colonized, and enclosing the latter in a definite (essentialist) space of knowledge, through which

it is known and defined, the colonial powers exert power and hegemony on the colonized. The

latter is represented as being an immutable and fossilized entity, whose essence remains the

16 Mathew Liebmann. “Postcolonial Cultural Affiliation: Essentialism, Hybridity, and NAGPRA”. In Matthew,
and Uzma Z. Rizvi (Ed.), Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique. Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2008.
PDF. 73.

17 Ania Loomba. “Colonial and Postcolonial Identities”, Colonialism-Postcolonialism.London: Routledge, 1998.

PDF. 105-107.
same no matter the spatial or historical contexts. This is manifest in Shakespeare’s play,

Othello, in which the North African protagonist, who’s a Moor, killed the woman he loved

when he had been informed of her alleged infidelity18 through another character. The fact of

blackness 19 undermines the actions of Othello as well as his character. He is regarded by other

characters as being both dangerous and repulsive, someone who is not welcomed.

The essential thing in this example is the idea of that unchanging essence within Othello,

the African native, which has to do with violence and atrocity, regardless of his social status.

Homi K Bhabha in his essay “The Other Question” maintains that one of the important

characteristics of colonial discourse “is its dependence on the concept of ‘fixity’ in the

ideological construction of ‘otherness’.” (66)20 ; Fixity, inalterability and essentiality are all

strategies of colonial discourse used to define the ‘other’.

Constructing a derogate image of the other, and rendering them essentially inferior to

the colonizer is an idea which has been reiterated by Bhabha in the aforementioned essay: “The

objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types

. . . in order to justify conquest and establish systems of administration and instructio n”

(ibid.70).Therefore the objective of fixity is to fix a degenerate image to the colonized and

render their identities everlastingly inferior to that of the colonizer.

One of the traits used in colonial discourse to define and identify the ‘other’ was skin

colour. Being a conspicuous trait, skin colour provided the colonizer with a particularly visib le

sign to draw the line between the colonizer and colonized. As Ania Loomba maintains, "color

was the most important signifier of cultural and racial difference” (107)21 . Associating and

18 Iago, a white character, manipulated Othello into murdering his wife, Desdemona. This carries a particular
significance from a postcolonial perspective.

19 Frantz Fanon wrote an essay in which he discussed the consciousness of a black individual vis -a-vis the white
other; it was entitled, “The Fact of Blackness”.

20 Homi K Bhabha. “The Other Question”, The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. PDF. 66-70
21 Ania Loomba. “Colonial and Postcolonial Identities”, Colonialism-Postcolonialism.London: Routledge, 1998.
PDF. 105.107
fixing all kinds of backwardness and derogation with that colour, at times through scientif ic

discourse22 , the colonial powers legitimized their imperialist conquests, basing it on an ideology

grounded in the improvement and civilization of the uncivilized and savage other.

What is important to take into account, however, is the degree to which essentialis t

assumptions and discourses have a formative and constitutive effect on their subjects. In the

following section, we tackle some of the attempts to deconstruct these essentialist conceptions

in an attempt to find pave the way for a negotiation of identity.

2. Anti-essentialist Modern Identities and the Postcolonial Discourse

In the previous section, the concept of identity and issue of identity formation has been dealt

with from a traditional standpoint; that is, it has been attempted to trace the conception of

identity throughout history, and how that history has been particularly useful for the colonial

powers. Identity, as is conceived of traditionally, is “one whole”; all its parts are interwove n

and cannot be separated. The modern discourses of identity, however, all tend to go against the

essentialist conception of identity. Somehow, the modern discourses in their totality might be

called “anti-essentialist” as they go against the essentialist claims of unity of the self; this

suggestion, however, implies the risk that those “anti-essentialist” discourses are, as well,

essentialist in a way or another. The argument is that their claim that identity is “essentia lly”

fragmented and disunited falls into the very opposite of their anti-essentialist project. To avoid

these complexions, however, identity has been dealt with from different modern perspectives,

namely postmodernist, poststructuralist/ deconstructionist and postcolonialist approaches.

These approaches cannot be easily posited as “anti-essentialist”, but they surely fall into the

project of dismantling the essentialist identifications of the “colonized other”.

22 Ania Loomba reiterates this fact of colonial discourse’s claims to “objectivity” in its representation of the
native, “Through the ‘objectivity’ of observation and science, European penetration into other lands is
legitimised” (57).
 2.1 Anti-essential Postmodernist, Poststructuralist/ Deconstructionist Discourses of

Identity

Anti-essentialist discourse is a counter-discourse to the aforementioned essentialist

conceptions of identity. Broadly speaking, it refers to the rejection of a unified or unitary

identity. Chris Barker notes that the “anti-essentialist position . . . points us to the politica l

nature of identity as a production . . . [and] directs us to the possibility of multiple, shifting, and

fragmented identities that can be articulated together in a variety of ways " (232)23 ; identity,

therefore , is constructed discursively, and is subject to change according to space, time and

usage. This conception of the term is an obvious deconstruction of essentialist identity politics

and an investigation of the alleged universality of what Andrew Curran calls the ‘universal man’

(Brewer 42)24 . It is a thinking outside the Enlightenment’s universalism and a critique of the

Eurocentric reason. It is also a critique of structuralism’s fixity of structure and the

ahistoricity25 of its analysis which is based in a large part on binarism and the belief in the

possibility of “arriving at a secure knowledge through the charting of differences within

structures” (Williams 1)26 . Poststructuralist thinkers, mainly Derrida and Foucault, argue

against the optimistic claims of structuralism for a science of signs; that is, a possibility of a

arriving at an objective knowledge or 'Truth'. Derrida, though in agreement with structuralis m’s

separation of the sign from its referent and its claim that meaning is basically arbitrary and

works through a system of difference, opposes the idea that the relation between signifier and

23
Barker Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 7

24
Daniel Brewer. The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment . 42
25 Analysing the way in which representation and meaning are produced, Jan Pieterse criticizes the structuralist
approach for three mean reasons: Ahistoricity, idealism, and tautology. He also maintains that “[t]he
processs character of representation, the shifts in imagery and or meaning over time, tends to be
underplayed in structuralist approaches because of the inclination to resolve every difference into a binary
opposition”( Alterity, Identity, Image: Selves and Others in Society and Scholarship 194). It is this sort
of reductionism that structuralism is being criticized for.

26
James Williams. Understanding Poststructuralism. 1
signified is fixed by a unified system of signification (e.g., social convention) or through binary

oppositions. He argues that the chain of signification is endless as language is essentially

unstable and is continuously destabilized. Language is structured by ‘self-difference’; words

differ both from other words and from themselves. This notion of difference and deferral is

invoked here to show how “[e]very invocation of an identity [. . .] has to occlude the fact that

no identity is ever identical to ‘itself’” (Lucy 52)27 . Indeed, even the concept of identity is both

different from other concepts (e.g., otherness, alterity) and within itself. Derrida, therefore,

introduces the idea of différance, whereby he maintains that language is constituted through

“infinite differences between signifiers and the infinite deferral of meaning” (Fulword 359)28 .

Part of the deconstructionist project is also the dismantling of binary oppositions upon

which the Western metaphysics was built, and the rendering transparent its processes and

conditions of formation with a focus on the part made inferior by such binaris m, or on what

Derrida terms the supplement:

Derrida recognizes that binary oppositions always effectively produce hierarchies, hierarchies which
deconstruction seeks to question and transform by demonstrating the constitutive importance of the
subordinate term as irreducible supplement. In the process, however, the excluded, repressed or
‘secondarized’ term is so profoundly redescribed that it can no longer be restricted to one side of the
opposition in which it participates, since it in fact comes to make that opposition possible in the first place.
(Wortham 131)29

It is, then, a critique of subordination and hierarchization in the realm of knowledge. Identity,

meaning and essence are all destabilized, deconstructed and made transparent through

deconstruction.

Michael Foucault, as well, provided a different conception of identity and subjectivity.

His is a “radically historicized subject” (Barker 229)30 . By this it is meant that “the subject is

27 Niall Lucy, A Derrida Dictionary. 52

28 Sarah Fulword, “Postmodernism (In Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Ed. John C Hawley) 359.

29
Simon Wortham. The Derrida Dictionary. 131

30 Barker Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 229

“wholly and only the product of history” (230)31 . Subjectivity formation is a discursive process

through which the subject is formed and transformed. Different subject positions, thus, emerge

through different discursive processes, and it is from the subject position we occupy that we

come to understand the world around us and give it meaning. The idea of identity as essence

is rejected by Foucault for the favor of a seemingly paradoxical conception of identity; he

maintains that identity is “both constituted by a personal experience and an individual history .

. . [and is] also and inevitably a product of the otherness of cultural, social, and linguis tic

determinants” (Karlis Racivskis 21)32 .

Both Derrida and Foucault, therefore, acknowledge the constituted and constructed

nature of identity; the first through language, and the other through discourse; thus, as the nature

of both language and discourse is essentially instable, the idea of a stable, unitary and coherent

identity has become obsolete and invalid. Identity, therefore, is always in the making, never

really finished, a continuous process of becoming, never really definite.

The unknowability and indeterminacy of the subject and the impossibility of fixating

certain identities results in what Stuart Hall terms a "crisis of identity". The subject is no longer

regarded as having an anchor in race, ethnicity or nationality, as all these concepts have been

decentered vigorously through "a variety of interdisciplinary areas, all of them . . . critical of

the notion of an integral, originary and unified identity"(1) 33 . A new understanding of the

concept of identity, thus, emerges to the surface subjecting any claims to oneness or

originariness to questions of relativism and irreductionism. Hall further emphasizes the

31 Barker Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 230

32 Karlis Racivskis, “michel foucault, rameau's nephew, and the question of identity” (In The Final Foucault. Ed.
James William Bernauer and David M. Rasmussen ) 21.

33
Stuart Hall, “Who Needs Identity (In Questions of Cultural Identity. Ed. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay)1-4.
fragmented nature of identity in modern times, and how it has come to be understood as

something unfixed and ever-changing. He argues that “

. . . [I]dentities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and
fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and
antagonistic, discourses, practices, and positions."(4)

What is important to note here is the idea that identity is not given but made; it is not already

there; it is constructed through a number of “discourses, practices, and positions”.

The idea of identity as being constructed rather than given is adopted by postmodernis t

critics in their attempt to redefine the subject in the midst of a turbulently ever-changing

universe. The postmodernist theory evolved around the dismantling and decentering of types

of knowledge once thought of as being universal, especially that of enlightenment 34 and the

grand narratives of modernism using poststructuralist theories as an analytical tool. Their

postmodernist critique stemmed from a growing awareness of the relativity of subjectivity and

identity formation. Robert Dunn holds the view that postmodernist theory regards identity as

being “inherently decentered and fluid because [sic.] constituted in unstable relations of

difference” (175)35 . The instability that shapes the nature of identity brings forth an aporia, an

uncertainty that forms the core of identity per se. The question, thus, becomes whether the very

possibility of thinking about identity as such is possible.

Holding this negative and pessimistic view towards the postmodernist approach to the

subject and identity might diverge the focus from the importance of such a theory in dismantling

what Robert Dunn calls “the foundational belief in first principles and notions of a unified

34 “Since the time of the Enlightenment, Western thought has been driven by the belief that it's possible to have a
direct and unmediated knowledge of reality-the reality of nature, and the reality of our own nature.
Progress meant that the application of reason, knowledge of reality, would lead to the conquest of natural
and social evils and the emancipation of humanity.” The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies,
Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym.

35
Robert G Dunn. Identity Crises: A Social Critique of Postmodernity. 175
epistemological standpoint” (176)36 . That is, the subject is no longer thought of from a single

Eurocentric standpoint; rather, all the conditions that intervene in subjectivity formation are

considered. The politics of representation come into play to disrupt any certainty or objectivity

about identity. It is clear from here the extent to which the postmodernist theory relies on a

constructionist viewpoint of identity. In a seminal essay in which Bauman discussed the

problem of identity politics in a postmodernist condition, he remarks that the “. . . the

postmodern 'problem of identity' is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep the options open”

(18)37 . The project of postmodernist theory, therefore, is anti-essentialist; the latter being

“engaged in interrogating the intricate and interlacing processes which work together to produce

all seemingly "natural" or "given" objects” (Fuss 2)38 .

It is, therefore, a kind of cultural relativism that both the poststructuralist /

deconstructivist and postmodernist theories put forth. Even though it is still problematic how

such theories can establish a site of resistance for those who are marginalized by the once-

dominating theories39 , they still accounts for much of the debates that have given rise to what

is now called the postcolonial theory.

2.2 The Postcolonial Subject: Postmodernist and Poststructuralist /

Deconstructionist Perspectives

Trying to establish a dialogue between the poststructuralist, postmodernist and

postcolonialist theories of identity and subjectivity formation is a risky task. To what extent

postcolonial theory relies on the poststructuralist (hence deconstructionist) and postmodern

36 Robert G Dunn. Identity Crises: A Social Critique of Postmodernity. 176

37 Zygmunt Bauman. “From Pilgrim to Tourist-or a Short History of Identity” ( In Questions of Cultural Identity.
Ed. Stuart Hall and Paul De Gay) 18.

38
Diana Fuss. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. 2

39 Those that have emerged from the Enlightenment for example.

conceptions of identity is a question which has given rise to a wide range of debates in cultura l

and postcolonial studies. “‘post-colonial’, ‘postmodern’, and ‘poststructural’”, notes the authors

of The Empire Writes back, “are inconvenient labels which cover a wide range of overlapping

literary and cultural practices” (160-61)40 . However, when tracing down the question of identity

and subjectivity in these theories, it becomes clear how all of them share closely similar views

about subjectivity formation, both in the postcolonial and postmodern contexts. By examining

the works of a number of a postcolonial critics, and especially the works of the so-called holy

trinity of postcolonial studies, E.Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi K Bhabha, one notices the

seminal role of the poststructuralist/ deconstructionist and, albeit to a lesser extent,

postmodernist theories in the way these critics deal with the colonial discourse in general, and

that of identity in particular.

Postmodern theory, however, has been received quite uncomfortably in postcolonia lis m

for a number of reasons. Ato Quayson dwells on the problematic assertion of postmodern theory

in a totally different context and under different conditions of identity formation. Although it is

a critique of Western universalism and an appeal to particularity and difference, postmodern

theory, it is argued, is just another form in which Eurocentrism and hegemony disguises itself.

Quayson points out this problem in stating that “the postmodern is part of an ensemble of the

hierarchizing impulse of Western discourses . . . and is ultimately a-political and does not feed

into larger projects of emancipation” (132)41 . It is important to note, however, the extent to

which postmodern theory destabilized the centrality and superiority of Western civilization; the

thing which resulted in what Owens calls “a crisis of cultural authority”. This destabiliza tio n

40
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial
Literatures. 160-61

41
Ato Quayson. Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process? 132- 143-46
was initiated by the very “necessity of encountering different cultures” (Ashcroft et al. 160) and

opening up to the “Other”.

Quayson draws upon two literary examples to show the way in which postcolonial and

postmodern characteristics intermingle. The first is a play entitled The Blinkards (1915) by the

Ghanaian nationalist Kobina Sekyi, in which she displays the life of a family who, having been

to England, attempt to (mis)appropriate the cultural specific elements of the English culture in

their home country, Ghana. Their insistence on ‘acting white’42 casts a satirical color on the

whole play. A split between language and culture, the sign and the referent, is also obvious in

this play as both characters can speak English, but cannot be English. It is obvious then that the

two characters live a kind of double or split consciousness 43 . The other example is a novel by

Toni Morriso, an African American, entitled The Bluest Eye( 1993). The novel is centered on

the struggle of Pecola Breesdlove to gain beauty, and thusly, “acceptability” through the

attainment of a sign of beauty in the modern world, the blue eyes. The blue eyes, notes Quayson,

have become “detached from their objective domain and then transferred into the domain of

commodification, accruing an exchange value through its social life, and becoming a desirable

commodity to ‘own’ as a means of identity affirmation”(145). Here again, a split the

consciousness of Pecola is evident; her struggle for self-affirmation in an impossibility, gaining

blue eyes (143-46).

42 The invocation of the ‘white’ color is not literal in this sense; rather, it refers to all cultural elements associated
with whiteness.

43 In The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Paul Gilroy begins the first chapter by stating:
“STRIVING TO BE both European and black requires some specific forms of double consciousness”
(Italics mine 1). This is the condition about which Du Bois talked in h is seminal book Srivings of The
Negro People: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's
self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused
contempt and pity. One feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it fro m
being torn asunder”(8).
 Both examples show the split in the consciousness of the modern subject, but they also

draw attention to postcolonial concerns, such as linguistic and cultural identity.

It has been mentioned earlier that postmodern theory is criticized for devouring the

subject from political agency. The postcolonial ‘project of emancipation’, however, invests

largely in agency for the subversion of colonial discourse. Quayson notes that “[t]he key

dimension that postcolonialism forces us to consider is that of agency, whilst the postmodernist

angle would make us settle on the economy of the image and the potential for the fragmenta tio n

of subject positions” (146);thus, While postmodern theory is largely apolitical and passive,

postcolonialism seeks to empower the subject.

Homi Bhabha, as well, takes the problematic of agency in postmodernity as an “. .

.increasing narrativization of the question . . . [of] subject formation.” (239)44 . He goes on to

suggest a different kind of modernity, a postcolonial modernity that he recognizes as a site for

asserting cultural difference and agency:

The power of the postcolonial translation of modernity rests in its performative, deformative structure that
does not simply revalue the contents of a cultural tradition, or transpose values 'cross -culturally’. The
cultural inheritance of slavery or colonialism is brought before modernity, not to resolve its historic
differences into a new totality, nor to forego its traditions. It is to introduce another locus of inscription and
intervention, another hybrid, 'inappropriate' enunciative site, through that t emporal split 45 . . . for the
signification of postcolonial agency.” (ibid., 242)

The postcolonial version of modernity, therefore, seeks to empower and (re)affirm the

identity of the once-colonized, and embed the postcolonial subject with a sense of active

agency. This is mainly where the postcolonial theory differs from postmodernism; the former

empowers subjects; the latter undermines them. “As well as revisiting and revising history, like

44 Homi K Bhabha. “ ‘Race’, Time and the Revision of Modernity” ( In The Location of Culture) .239

45 By the temporal split or time-lag, Bhabha means the process by which the metanarratives of modernity that are
based on the idea of a linear and progressive history have been interrupted by the emergence of
colonialism and postcolonial theory.
postmodernism, [postcolonial critics] are interested in relearning the role of the colonized as

agent and combatant, as the historical subject that postmodernism undermines” (Childs and

Williams 203)46 . While postmodernism is concerned with decentering the liberal humanis m’s

notions of the individual and progress, postcolonialism is much concerned with the idea of an

“alienated subjectivity” (ibid.). It is evident, then, that the postmodern narrative of identity as

an impossibility is not, altogether, opposed to the postcolonial notion of “alienation”. The

postcolonial critics aim at affirming and centralizing a postcolonial identity, while the

postmodern project of identity is far from being a useful tool for such affirmation.

It is clear, therefore, the reason behind the preference of many postcolonial theorists to

theorize ‘poststructurally’, rather than relying on postmodern critiques of modernity. Edward

Said, for instance, used Foucault in his analysis of Orientalist discourse so extensively that “it

is in many ways possible to regard [it]. . . as a preeminent example of Foucauldian post-

structuralism applied to the unmasking and delineating of a globally present ‘discourse’” (Dillet

463)47 . The decentering of the subject and the rendering transparent the different conditions of

the formation of subject positions has been a prominent goal in postcolonial theory.

Appropriating Foucault’s notion of discourse and discursive formations and practices allowed

Said to analyze the discourse of Orientalism in relation to all the discursive practices

surrounding it. He vehemently opposes the idea of the “essential Orientality of the orient”, and

proposes that the idea of the Orient as such is a construct. "[W]hat gave the Oriental's world its

intelligibility and identity was not the result of his own efforts but rather the whole complex

series of knowledgeable manipulations by which the Orient was identified by the West” (40) 48 .

46
Peter Childs, and Patrick Williams. An Introduction to Post-colonial Theory. 203

47
Benoît Dillet. The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism. 463

48
Edward Said W. Orientalism. 40
 Chapter Two
Crossing the Borders
3. Hybridity and Diaspora

3.1 Hybridity

The theories that have been discussed so far take as their focal point the apparent

victimization of the colonized subject. They also emphasize the colonizer/colonized binarims,

with the former held as superior while the latter as being inferior. It has also been made clear

the idea that postcolonialism came to oppose this binarism and ‘return the gaze’. In their attempt

to return the gaze, some postcolonial critics emphasized the victimization of colonized subject

and unraveled the ideological representations and identifications undertaken by the colonizer,

as well as highlighting the question of power underlying the colonial discourse. Others,

however, have tried to go beyond this binarism, and offer a deeper understanding of the colonial

discourse. New concepts came to the realm of postcolonial studies as a result of this negotiatio n.

Hybridity and Third Space are two concepts which have been introduced by the promine nt

postcolonial critic Homi K Bhabha, and continue to shape much of the discussions centered on

cultural identity in cultural studies in general, and postcolonial studies in particular.

Before being introduced to the postcolonial theoretical framework, hybridity had a long

history in the western thought; the thing which makes its adoption in the postcolonial discourse

problematic. The term was loaded with the scientific-racist mindset of the Western dominant

powers in its struggle to identify itself in opposition with the ‘rest’. Classifications of human

race were made in the way animals were classified, with the “African [. . .] placed at the bottom

of the human family, next to the ape” (Young 6)49 . The racist connotations of hybridity as

paralleled with miscegenation, then, undermine its use in postcolonialism. However, hybrid ity,

although it is used historically in a negative way, can still hold within it an emancipatory power

for the postcolonial critics who, by virtue of their approach, can subvert the negativity of the

49 Robert Young. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. 6

term. Papastergiadis inquires in his essay “Tracing Theory in Hybridity”: “should we use only

words with a pure and inoffensive history, or should we challenge essentialist models of identity

by taking on and then subverting their own vocabulary” (258)50 . Hybridity, therefore, has been

emptied of its ideological connotations, as Peter Brooker argues, “[. . .] to refer to the mixed or

hyphenated identities of persons or ethnic communities, or of texts which express and explore

this condition” (126)51 . Indeed, the role of postcolonial counter-discourse is to subvert the

notions of the metropolis using the very same notions once used to subjugate the colonized.

Mitchell remarks that “[t]he standard dictionary definition of the term [hybridity] is of

a thing derived from heterogeneous sources or composed of incongruous elements” (260)52 .

This is a definition in which the ‘mixed-ness’ of two things is emphasized. The differe nce

between all those “heterogeneous sources” or “incongruous elements” is reduced to one

cohesive whole, a single entity. The latter is the result of the interactions between those

components and is informed wholly by the negotiation of their differences. It is exactly this

characteristic which explains the attractiveness of hybridity for postcolonial critics. Hybridity,

as applied in postcolonial studies, rejects the idea of an authentic culture or identity for the sake

of fluid, ever-changing forms. Ashcroft et al. define hybridity as “the creation of new

transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization (108)53 ”. The emergence

“of new transcultural forms” of cultures within hybridity should not be understood as only

another form of “westernization”, as indeed “[. . .] the West itself may be viewed as a mixture

50 Nikos Papastergiadis. “Tracing Hybridity in Theory” (In Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural
Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism ed. Werbner, P. & Modood., T). 257-281

51 Peter Brooker. A Glossary of Cultural Theory. 126

52 Katharyne Mitchell. “Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity.” (In Environment and Planning D:

Society and Space). 260

53
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts. 108
and western culture as a Creole culture” (Pieterse 76)54 . Claims to purity cannot “[. . .] be as

easily linked to cultural identities, which consist of constructed and imagined elements” (Smith

5)55 .

Hybridity, therefore, does not presuppose the existence of a pure identity or culture;

rather, it challenges the nativist claims for authenticity, recognizes cultural diversity, omits

cultural boundaries and disseminates essentialist identity politics. It “[. . .] may be subversive

of essentialism and homogeneity, disruptive of static spatial and political categories of center

and periphery, high and low, class and ethnos, and in recognizing multiple identities, widen the

space for critical engagement”(Pieterese 58)56 .

It is a creation of new identities that are neither local, nor entirely global. Both the local

and the global interact in a continuous negotiation of power to produce a different entity that

incorporates both identities, yet conforms to none of them in particular. “The local and the

global interact to create a new identity that is distinct in each context. As the two interact, the

local influences the global and the global influences the local. The local is universalized and

the universal is localized” (Keri E. Iyall Smith 3).

Michael Syrotinsk notes that the adoption of hybridity in postcolonial studies has been

useful for two main considerations:

“on the one hand, it has allowed us to expose and critically analyse the close links between the
biological determinism in which hybridity is grounded and the racialism of colonial ideology;
and on the other, it points to the ways in which the foregrounding and active reappropriation of
hybrid cultural identities, and the disruption of homogeneity in all its forms, opens the way for
counter-discursive and counter-hegemonic political theory and practice” (26) 57 .

54
Jan Nederveen Pieterse. Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange. 76
55 E., Iyall Smith Keri, and Patricia Leavy. Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations. 5

56 Jan Nederveen Pieterse. Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange. 58

57 Michael Syrotinski. Deconstruction and the Postcolonial: At the Limits of Theory. 29

The biological determinism of the colonial discourse, as has been suggested by Robert Young,

over emphasizes difference in terms of race and holds the mixed-ness of races as being

essentially infertile (7)58 . The racial essentialism employed by the colonial discourse was a

means of stabilizing the cultural superiority of the west and the inferiority of the rest. However,

Homi Bhabha argues that the relation of the colonizer and colonized is not always marked by

the binary opposition of one being superior and the other being inferior, as the subject positions

of both entities are not stable.

Utilizing the Lacanian psychoanalysis to approach the colonial discourse, Bhabha came

to understand that both the colonizer and colonized suffer from a continuous and constant

destabilization of identity. To understand how hybridity works as a subversive strategy,

Bhabha’s theorization of mimicry should be invoked. According to Bhabha, mimicry is the

process through which the colonized imitates ‘partially’ the colonizer. He defines it as “the

desire [of the colonizer] for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference, that is

almost the same but not quite” (86)59 . In this definition, mimicry is described as being a colonial

strategy for the maintenance of hegemony over the colonized. However, mimicry is transformed

once adopted by the colonized; it is never identical to itself, and the mimicry of the colonized

is largely shaped by mockery. Bhabha emphasizes the idea that mimicry is not only the slavish

representation of an already existing identity or essence; rather, its 'menace . . . is its double

vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its

authority"(88)60 .

58 Robert Young. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. 7

59 Homi K Bhabha. The Location of Culture. 86

60 Ibid. 88
 Through mimicry, therefore, the colonized is given an active site of resistance through

which a reversal of colonial discourse becomes possible. Mimicry unveils the uncertainty that

shapes the heart of colonial discourse and the hollowness of the values of post-enlightenme nt

Europe, as Bhabha puts it;

The effect of mimicry on the authority of colonial discourse is profound and disturbing.

For in 'normalizing' the colonial state or subject, the dream of post-Enlightenme nt

civility alienates its own language of liberty and produces another knowledge of its

norms (86)61

Mimicry renders clear the ambivalence of the colonial discourse to produce a colonial subject

who is “almost the same but not white” (89)62 . It is a negotiation of difference to produce

something entirely new; something that “[. . .] is neither One nor the Other but something else

besides, in-between - find their agency in a form of the 'future' where the past is not originar y,

where the present is not simply transitory” (219)63 . It is in this “hybrid gap” (58)64 and “Third

Space of enunciations” (38)65 that the possibility of the emergence of new identities becomes

evident. The assets of these new identities lies in their ability to transcend the standards of the

local without fully conforming to the global. “Those who occupy hybrid spaces benefit from

having an understanding of both local knowledge and global cosmopolitanism” (E., Iyall Smith

Keri 5)66 .

61 Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 86.

62 Ibid.89

63 Ibid. 219

64 Ibid. 58

65 Ibid. 38

66 E., Iyall Smith Keri, and Patricia Leavy. Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations. 5
 It is, therefore, the dilemma of the age to attempt to pin down ‘hybridity’ to a single

definition. It has been mentioned how this concept changes epistemologically and ideologica lly,

to finally settle down as emancipatory, at least in postcolonial studies. It is this focus of

hybridity on the fluidity of identity that sets it as a very useful ‘theory’ for what is to be

discussed shortly, diaspora.

3.2 Diaspora

The fragmentation of identity as has been discussed in earlier chapters with postmodernist,

poststructuralist and post-colonialist theories originates mainly from the displacement and

alienation of individuals. Indeed, the experience of colonization has a traumatic effect over the

identity of the once-colonized subjects, a traumatic formative effect. These impacts can be

observed in the struggle of these individuals to locate themselves, either through a nostalgic

affiliation with a lost past, or a problematic attempt to claim a hybrid identity, and thus, be

haunted by two conflicting loyalties67 . It is the diasporas that are most conspicuously afflicted

by this destabilization of identity which parallels a destabilization of culture.

To define diaspora, a hint at the history of the concept and its associations proves to be

a must. The Oxford Professor, Roben Cohen, highlights three main phases through which

diaspora as it is discussed in its present form has been. The first phase was concerned with the

Jewish experience, only to extend in the 1960s and 1970s to include all the peoples who “[. . .]

conceived their scattering as arising from a cataclysmic event that had traumatized the group as

a whole, thereby creating the central historical experience of victimhood at the hands of a cruel

oppressor (Cohen 1)68 . In the second phase, which starts from 1980s, diaspora has come to

designate even larger categories, and became a “metaphorical designation”; that is, it has come

67 A loyalty to their former identity, and another to the colonize’s identity.

68 Roben Cohen. Global Diasporas: An introduction. 1

to define whole arrays of voluntarily or involuntarily dispersed groups. In this case, it is no

longer limited to victim diasporas; rather, it has become an all-encompassing concept. The third

phase of diaspora is shaped by social constructionists’ postmodern convictions of the

fragmented nature of the identity of the diasporas. For them, a definition of diaspora that is

based on the ideas of “‘homeland’ and ‘religious/ ethnic community’” should be put ‘under

erasure’ as postmodern “[. . .] identities have become deterritorialized and constructed and

deconstructed in a flexible and situational way” (Cohen 1)69 ; the thing which pleads the

necessity for a new understanding of diaspora that parallels those changes in identity formatio n.

The fourth and final phase has not rejected altogether the claims of social constructionists, but

stresses the notions of home and belonging as the “ideas of home and homeland [. . .] remain

powerful discourses” in studying and encapsulating diaspora (Cohen 2)70 . It is in this last phase

that the features found in most postcolonial diaspora writings can be located.

Simply put, diaspora refers to all forms of socio-cultural dislocations “[. . .] resulting

from modern colonialism and nation-building, dislocations epitomized in the histories of

indenture, transatlantic slavery, and the expulsion of indigenous peoples from ancestral lands”

(Chariandy)71 . The adoption of diaspora as a theory in postcolonial studies stems from the

significance of the term in conceptualizing “migrancy in terms of adaptation and constructio n

– adaptation to changes, dislocations and transformations, and the construction of new forms

of knowledge and ways of seeing the world,” (Shackleton i)72 which inflected the colonial

subject73 , “migrants as well as indigenous populations, victims and victimizers” (Shackleton

69 Roben Cohen. Global Diasporas: An introduction. 1

70 Ibid. 2

71 David Chariandy. “Postcolonial Diasporas” (In The Postcolonial Text 2.1).

72 Mark Shackleton. Diasporic Literature and Theory - Where Now? i

73 It is necessary to note that the ‘colonial subject’ is used here in the sense Bhabha theorizes for it in hybridity,
i.e., to mean both the colonizer and colonized.
i)74. Indeed, diaspora theories do not aspire to “mythologize” the victimization of the colonized

or the oppressed; they are rather concerned with “[. . .] how historically disenfranchised peoples

have developed inventive tactics for transforming even the most sinister experiences of

dislocation into vibrant and revolutionary forms of political and cultural life.” (Chariandy).

Dislocation, therefore, does not become a disempowering factor, but rather, an emancipator y

site for the dispersed peoples.

Black diaspora is one of prominent importance postcolonial discussions. The once

colonized who have been forced to leave their homelands, or those whose displaceme nt

emanates from a freewill find themselves “constantly negotiating between two extremes”

(Wright 2)75 . The first is the call of their motherland, the longing for an origin, “the

hypercollective, essentialist identity” (Wright 2)76 which provides them a sense of

belongingness to a group. The second, however, is more particular to the individual –

hyperindividual-; it is influenced by the poststructuralist critique of collectivities and,

alternatively, a focus on the individual identity. The question, thus, becomes whether to focus

on individual or collective diasporas. Michelle Wright suggests that defining African (or Black)

diasporic identity “[. . .]must somehow incorporate the diversity of Black identities in the

diaspora yet also link all those identities to show that they indeed constitute a diaspora rather

than an unconnected aggregate of different peoples linked only in name”(2) 77 . Wright further

emphasizes that the diasporic approach to “Black subjectivity” should not be based on

essentialist assumptions of ethnicity, “yet it must provide some sort of specificity” (3)78 .

74 Mark Shackleton. Diasporic Literature and Theory - Where Now? i

75 Michele M. Wright. Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora. 2

76 Ibid. 2

77 Ibid. 2

78 Ibid. 3
 Diaspora has come to oppose mainly the essentialist understandings of race and identity,

as well as the “doctrine of fixed origins [. . .] as beacons of hope and liberation” (Knowles

159)79 . However, this opposition of origins and the inaccessibility of the new culture create a

tension in the identity of the diaspora. The space of in-betweeness accepts some types of

diaspora, while fully rejecting others, as Cohen notes, “The deployment of skin colour in many

societies as a signifier of status, power and opportunity, make it impossible for any people of

African descent to avoid racial stigmatization” (130)80 . Skin color still persists as the primary

defining factor.

Transnational subjectivities, therefore, are shaped through a sense of nostalgia for a lost

past and a willingness to feel ‘home away from home’. It is not altogether possible to embrace

a hybrid identity81 , as Cohen explains, “Lodged in a state of limbo or liminality, they would

experience a crisis of meaning, where institutions, values and norms dissolve and

collapse.”(129)82 . The new land, the new culture and the new people make the diasporic identity

an alienated one. The diaspora is caught between two identities, two conflicting loyalties,

amongst which only one can be singled out; but it cannot be. And the only option left is a dual

identity which is in constant conflict with itself.

79 Caroline Knowles. Race and Social Analysis. 159

80 Roben Cohen. Global Diasporas: An introduction. 130

81 Especially for the first-generation diaspora, the experience of colonization made them wary of adopting a hybrid
identity.

82 Roben Cohen. Global Diasporas : An introduction. 129

 Chapter Three
Identity in the Literature of the Diaspora
Introduction

The colonial experience has a long lasting effect on the identity formation of the once-

colonized. They live a constant alienation from their cultures of origin and an inability to

abandon the new homeland. The experience of the once colonized in the postcolonial context

results in feelings of ambivalence and a strong nostalgia for an authentic origin and comforting

‘essentialist’ identities. All these elements should be investigated while going through the

postcolonial fiction of the displaced, the dispersed, and the diaspora. The fiction that has been

written by these writers is meant to address the traumatic effect of the colonial experience on

the once colonized, and communicate their experience using the medium most common at the

time, literature. The first section addresses the conflict that shapes the identity of the once-

colonized in the postcolonial context. Through the works of Lahiri, Kureichi and Walcott, the

task is to render visible the conflicting loyalties that shape the once-colonized identity. This

division is addressed from a postcolonial standpoint by presenting three different accounts of

diaspora in three different genres83 ; therefore, a variety of experiences which offer a differe nt

understanding of the identity formation of the diaspora is addressed. The second section,

however, brings to the surface the fact of hybridity and how it enables the characters to live in

two cultures, and negotiate the borders of their cultures in an attempt to find for themselves a

‘third identity model’ that would reconcile both the identity of their origins and that of the host

lands. The third section is centered on the diaspora identity in its relation with the experience

of colonization. The three works discussed all belong to the postcolonial diaspora context;

therefore, an investigation of those works in the light of diaspora theories proves to be a must.

83 Walcott’s poem, Kureichi’s play and Lahiri’s short story.

 1. Dual Identities, Conflicting Loyalties

The works of Jhumpa Lahiri, Dereck Walcott and Kureichi Hanif offer an extensive account of

this dual identification and ambivalence. They are saturated by questions of identity, as both a

loss and desire. The conflict of loyalties inscribed in the fatal choice demanded of the characters

in their works is the subject matter of the discussion in this section.

1.1.India or America?

Lahiri’s “Third and Final continent” is included within a collection of stories by the same writer

entitled Interpreter of Maladies. What is important to note about this collection is that they are

all told from a third person’s narrative point, while the story in question is the only one in which

Lahiri uses an ‘I’, a character voicing his experience. This narrative technique lends the story

the subjective capacity needed to exploit the theme of identity; it is particularly important

because it provides a deeper insight into the character’s life, the different transformation that

occur to and in him, and the way whereby he managed to “survive on three continents” (Lahiri

216)84 .

The story revolves around the life of a Bengali immigrant as he left India in 1964 and

went to London to finish his studies. There, he was compelled both to study and to work at the

university’s library. His final destination is Boston, where he got a job in Dewey Library at

MIT. His journey has been one of a tiresome kind, as he struggled to reaffirm his Indian identity

in both Britain and America without fully rejecting to adhere to the host country’s culture and

identity. His is a dilemma of belonging, as he can neither fully reject his culture, which

constitutes a large part of his identity formation, nor fully reject the culture of the country in

which he now lives. The un-naming of the character is another argument that shows the extent

84 Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third and Final Continent”, in Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladie: 216.
to which his identity is fragmented and unsettled. The story presents a character who cannot

reclaim a fixed, fully affirmed identity. The dislocation in which he lives makes him unable to

decide which identity to reclaim, whether that of the culture in which he was brought up or the

one in which he now lives.

The outset of the story introduces a character already fragmented and dislocated from

his Indian origins. While in London, he shows a certain resistance to be fully assimilated by the

English culture, a resistance that is conspicuous in his choice to live in a “house occupied

entirely by penniless Bengali bachelors like myself [himself]” (Lahiri 189 85 ). When he is in

England, along with other Bengali bachelors, he retains his Indian identity complete with being

“barefoot in drawstring pajamas, drinking tea”, watching cricket and eating “pots of egg curry”

(Lahiri 189)86 . The transmutation of the character, however, begins to take place when he

receives a job in Boston, and thus moves to live in America. Before leaving to Boston, he first

attends his arranged wedding at Calcutta. The significance of this journey, from London to

Calcutta and then to Boston, lies in how the character tries to bridge the two culture, reconcile

the difference between them and find a way to survive in both.

It is only when the character lands in Boston that his life becomes colored with anxiety,

which is caused by the huge gap that lies between the two cultures, Indian and American.

However, Mrs. Croft, a 103 years old woman living alone, whom the narrator met, gave him a

new hope for the possibility of an identity that reconciles the difference between both cultures.

Mrs. Croft is a typical American woman imbued with typical Indian values. Her traditio na l

views, of modesty for example, would probably match those with which the narrator is already

familiar. She describes the narrator’s being with her daughter, who is sixty-eight years old, as

85 Ibid. 189

86 Ibid. 189
being improper, and exclaims that if she happens to see a girl on the streets wearing a mini-

skirt, she would “have her arrested” (Lahiri 203)87 .

It is from here on that the narrator’s anxiety becomes less evident, and his admiration to

the American culture gains ground. The narrator’s admiration of Mrs. Croft is evident in the

story. Even when he moves to settle with his wife, who arrives later on to Boston, he still feels

a strong attachment to Mrs. Croft, which makes his departure from her dwell much difficult for

him to do. She provided a balance for him between his old and new home. Even when later he

is settled in his life, he feels a connection with her, and gets a home “on a tree-lined street much

like Mrs. Croft's” (Lahiri 215)88 , imitating the first place he truly felt at “home”. His movement

to live with his wife symbolizes a search for an origin, which is accompanied by a nostalgic

feeling of being away from Mrs. Croft, his other home.

The narrator’s movement from one culture to another, from one identity to another,

indicates, more than anything else, that ambivalence and undecided-ability of his situation. He

holds a great admiration for the American culture, which is symbolized by the old woman, but

cannot altogether reject his first origins. By the end of the story, the narrator seems to have

finally come to terms with his situation. His son, who “attends Harvard University” (Lahiri

215)89 , indicates another complexion within the story, as he speaks of him with a fear that he

(his son) would forget altogether his roots and become absorbed by the American culture. The

following statement is an example of this anxiety: “[. . .] wee drive to Cambridge to visit him,

or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak in

Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die” (Lahiri 215) 90 . It is

87 Ibid. 203.

88 Ibid. 215.

89 Ibid. 215.

90 Ibid. 215.
obvious that the narrator’s admiration of the American culture does not make him at odds with

his own origins, but his anxiety about his son, who symbolizes the new generations of

immigrants in America, is an indication of how the immigrant’s ‘loyalty’ to his origins fades

with time, and becomes superseded by a loyalty to the host land.

Another important thing to note is the style of the story itself. The narrator thinks in

Bengali and writes in English, a point that is better elaborated in Dereck Walcott’s poem “A

Far Cry from Africa”91 .

1.2.England or Africa?

Dereck Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa” is a typical example of the dispersed nature

of the identity of the once-colonized in the neocolonial world. Being of both European and

African origins, Walcott exploits the conflict that resides in his dual identification with two

conflicting cultures, cultures that have been historically at odds with one another. The poem

might be considered as an attempt from the speaker to find an identity, a stable anchor, which

would finally resolve the dilemma of his dual cultural identification. The speaker’s journey,

however, ends where it started. He is caught between two identities, and just like Lahir i’s

character, he can neither fully reject, nor fully claim any of them. Indeed, he is caught between

two loyalties.

The double identification of the speaker is manifest from the very title of the poem. “A

far Cry from Africa” indicates a distance between the speaker and his origins. The “Cry” implies

an agony of “unbelonging”, but it also saturates the speaker’s alienation from Africa, and his

undecided-ability whether to go back to Africa, or ‘Cry’ from afar.

91 Dereck Walcott. “A Far Cry from Africa”, in Walcott Collected Poems 1948-1984. The poem was published
in 1962.
 The poem begins with the speaker’s scornful attitude towards the cruelties of both

colonized and colonizer, whom he metaphorically calles the gorilla and superman respectively.

He, then, moves to discuss his own ambivalent state and dual identification, which he can pin

down to neither of the two identities. The objective stand from which the poem is written lends

the poet the possibility to speak of the pros and cons of the two cultures, thus avoiding to be

biased by the moral considerations of neither. It is from this objective stand that the poet

describes the Kiyuko as being mere beasts. He describes them as being “quick as flies, / Batten

upon the bloodstreams of the veldt” (Walcott 2-3)92 . Their cruelty, for the speaker, negates all

humane considerations. For the speaker, this cruelty justifies “[t]he salients of colonial policy”

(Walcott 8)93 , a statement which would not be accepted wholeheartedly by postcolonial critics.

The speaker, however, does not leave the British rule untouched. In the following lines “Only

the worm, colonel of carrion, cries / "Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"”(Walco tt

5-6)94 , the speaker equates the colonial role with “the worm”, and devours it of any compassion

or humanity. These contradictions persist throughout the poem, and end up with a last divisio n

which is proclaimed in the line, “The gorilla wrestles with the superman” (Walcott 25) 95 . The

gorilla symbolizes the Africans, with their savagery and natural strength, whilst the superman

symbolizes the artificiality and hollowness of colonial British authority.

The three first stanzas deal with this duality, paradox, dual inflection, and the cruelty of

both sides; in the last stanza, the first “I” is introduced. This stanza is pertinent in the poem as

it voices clearly the attitude of the speaker towards his double belonging, in-betweeness, and,

thus, unbelonging. The line “I who am poisoned with the blood of both” (Walcott 26) 96 implies

92 Dereck Walcott, “A Far Cry from Africa”, in Walcott, Collected Poems: 1948-1984: 2-3.

93 Ibid. 8.

94 Ibid. 5-6.

95 Ibid. 25.

96 Ibid. 26.
a negative attitude of the speaker towards the hybrid nature of his identity, a condition which is

elaborated in a later section. The important thing to note about this statement, however, is the

attitude of the speaker towards the impurity of his blood, towards the fragmented nature of his

identity and towards the ‘unfixed’ nature of his identity. In the following line, the speaker states

clearly the dilemma of his dual identity, “Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?”(Walco tt

27)97 . It is a question that carries within it the agony of the speaker and the feeling of alienatio n

that he has towards both cultures and identities. It also indicates the speaker’s sense of loss and

inability to claim neither of the two identities. As he rejects the cultural heritage of both cultures,

he cannot identify with neither of them; thus, he considers himself an outsider, an isolated lost

individual. The scornful attitude of the speaker towards British imperialism is, again, invoked,

“I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule” (Walcott 28-29)98 . The speaker, then,

voices the source of his hesitation, and inability to claim one final identity, “how choose /

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?” (Walcott 30) 99 Here, it is very conspicuous

the speaker’s division and double identification. Africa is in his blood; he can never disassociate

himself freely from it. The question of race could be invoked here to further emphasize the

impossibility of the poet’s detachment from his African roots. English, however, is the langua ge

he admires. It is not only a matter of language, but that of a whole culture. The speaker, then,

lays down the two options he has, “Betray them both, or give back what they give?”(Walco tt

32)100 The speaker considers turning his back to both cultures, disclaim both for the favor of

another that has nothing to do with the two, but that would be a betrayal. The second option is

imbued with an unresolved ambiguity; is it “to give back” in the sense of ‘returning’, or in the

97 Ibid. 27.

98 Ibid. 28-29.

99 Ibid. 30.

100 Ibid. 32.

sense of ‘retaliating against’ both cultures? Is the speaker refusing what both cultures present

him with? Or is he resisting the cruelty of the colonial rule and savagery of the African? Is he

trying to be both the colonizer and colonized? These are only some of the unresolved equations

which are implied in the speaker’s question.

The last two lines further complicate the identity of the speaker. He cannot “face such

slaughter [the British slaughtering the Africans] and be cool” (Walcott 33) 101 . That is, he cannot

wholeheartedly accept to assimilate the culture of the nation who “slaughtered” his own people.

Yet, he cannot also embrace the darkness of African culture. The speaker ends the poem with

obviously no answers to his dilemma. His identity is still caught in an in-between space, a space

of conflicting loyalties.

The double origin of the speaker, whom we identify with the poet, Walcott, results in a

confusion, which is evident throughout the poem. The poet is racially African, and linguistica lly

English, which creates a tension in the poe. The ambivalent identity of the speaker, to be both

white and black, makes hard any fixation on a single origin.

1.3.Pakistan or England?

While Walcott’s speaker, or presumably Walcott himself, is torn between two origins, cultures

and identities, one of which provides him with a linguistic affiliation while the other with a

historical one, Shahid Hasan, the main character of Hanif Kureichi’s two acts play The Black

Album, finds himself in a traumatic divide, between the culture of his Pakistani origins, and that

of the country in which he now resides, London. Kureichi, not only brought to light the dilemma

of a migrant in a country with a colonial history, but also sheds light on contemporary issues,

the main of which is religious extremism and racism. However, the issue put under examina tio n

in this play is the cultural divide and conflict, which shapes the identity of Shahid, the main

101 Ibid. 33.

character in the play, and how the interaction with other characters brings the dilemmas of self-

identification and social and cultural reality are highlighted.

Hanif Kureichi’s play, which he developed from his 1995 novel102 , revolves around the

experience of a Pakistani student who migrated to London to pursue his higher studies. There,

he meets students from different geographical origins, but with the same cultural affiliatio n.

Raiz al-Hussain, the first character Shahid encounters, speaks his cultural loyalty right from the

outset of the play, by using the Islamic greeting and speaking Kurdo to Shahid. The relations hip

between the two develops as Shahid meets other friends of Raiz, namely Chado, Hat and Tahira,

and discovers the main thing that bounds the group together, faith and religion. Shahid, then,

meets other characters like the professor Deedee Osgood and Andrew Brownlow, who stand in

complete opposition with Shahid’s first friends. It is from here that the cultural tension starts to

take hold of Shahid.

It is useful to group the characters in the play into two main categories, one representing

the cultural origins of Shahid in its most extremist forms, and another which represents the

‘other’, host culture of London. The first category includes four main characters, Raiz, Chado,

Hat and Tahira, while second involves Deedee, Brownlow, and Chili, Shahid’s elder brother.

The first category emphasizes the cultural origins of Shahid, a religious and linguis tic

affiliation, while the latter, which represents the Western culture, is characterized by sexuality

and pleasure, as well as an indifference to theological debates.

At the outset of the play, Shahid admires Raiz and his disciples’ faith and identity

affirmation in a new world, but upon meeting his professor Deedee, his admiration of the

Western way of life usurps his first admiration of its strength. When Shahid received a copy of

The Satanic Verses from Deedee, he is already proclaiming a religious uncertainty, a religio us

and cultural uncertainty that often puts Shahid in awkward situations with his friends. When all

102 The play, which was first performed in 2009 and published in 2010, is based on a novel by the same author
written in 1995.
his friends exclaim, Allah-u-Akbar, Shahid is the only one who keeps silent; “All (except

Shahid) Allah-u-Akbar!”(Kureichi 29; act 1, Scene 3)103 . This ambivalence of belonging and

not-belonging to the ‘community’ is made clear when the whole group decides to take

vengeance for a Pakistani old man who has been offended by white students, as an act of

solidarity and unity. When Riaz requests Shahid to accompany them in their journey, Shahid

responds by saying, “I have to see someone on family business later – after working on your

poem …” (Kureichi 50; act 1, scene 7)104 Indeed, by saying this, he is trying to avoid going

with the group, but the reason behind his hesitation becomes clear only later on. Shahid,

however, accompanies his friends as an act of negotiation, for he does not want neither to lose

them, nor to miss his appointment with Deedee. Upon their meeting, Shahid notices the paradox

that inflects the personality of Riaz, about whom he thinks as an example of the true believer in

the group, when he comes in “wearing the red Paul Smith shirt and jeans”(Kureichi 55; act 1,

scene 8)105 . Indeed, the whole group noticed that paradox, but none could point it out, for Riaz

represents the voice of an authority. Only a few lines later, Raiz criticizes the whole Western

civilization, and says that it is “proving to be a hoax”(Kureichi 59; act 1, scene 8) 106 . The

paradox which shapes Raiz’s personality and conventions is made clear when he both critic ize s

and admires the Western civilization. Shahid, few moments later, leaves his friends to join

Deedee in her house.

The journey from one place to another, from one group to another, symbolizes Shahid’s

constant movement between two cultures. When he is at Deedee’s house, he is offered wine

and “the spliff”, elements that stand in contradiction with the beliefs and convictions of his

103 Hanif, Kureichi, The Black Album: 29; act 1, Scene 3.

104 Ibid. 50; act 1, scene 7.

105 Ibid. 55; ; act 1, scene 8.

106 Ibid. 59; act 1, Scene 8

friends. He is even attracted sexually to the woman whom his friends described as being of

“nudists” (Kureichi 31; act 1, scene 3)107 . This dual identity gives Shahid the feeling that he has

many selves, not a unified one. His aspiration to come to terms with religion with the help of

his fundamentalist friends is never fully achieved, as it contradicts his admiration of Prince’s

music and Deedee.

It is obvious until now the ambivalent character of Shahid, and how he aspires to be

both English, and “a Pakistani at heart” (Kureichi 19; act 1, scene 2) 108 . This divide could be

symbolized by his friendship with Raiz and Deedee at once. Raiz stands for the conservative

Pakistani culture, while Deedee represents an image of England. Shahid, on the one hand,

attends prayers and theological debates with Raiz and his friends, and, on the other, finds

excuses to leave his friends and join his beloved woman, Deedee, drink alcohol and indulge in

drugs. He is loyal both to the Pakistani culture, and to the English culture, which he admires.

He is both Pakistani and English. Deedee expresses her worry that Shahid’s loyalty to both

cultures might be considered by his friends as hypocrisy, “Would your friends say you’re a

hypocrite” (Kureichi 70; act 1, scene 9)109 . The question, thus, poses itself, for how long can

this divide last, especially that the two cultural forms are in total opposition?

Shahid is forced to make a decision and choose between his friends or Deedee. He is no

longer able to decide whom to call “his people”; when Deedee tries to remind Shahid that Raiz

and his friends are his people, he replies hesitantly by saying; “I get confused sometimes ”

(Kureichi 80; act 2, scene 10)110 . When his friends plot to take vengeance on Salman Rushdie

for insulting their religion, he protests, “Do we have a monopoly on hurt? Why should our

107 Ibid. 31; act 1, scene 3

108 Ibid. 19; act 1, scene 2

109 Ibid. 70; act 1, scene 9

110 Ibid. 80; act 2, scene 10

feelings of hurt be greater than his? If we attack him we become no better than the racists we

oppose! We should debate with him” (Kureichi 87; act 2, scene 10) 111 . While his friends reject

difference and claim their convictions as the only and true ones, “It’s not we who must change,

but the world!” (Kureichi 40; act 1, scene 4)112 , Shahid negotiates that difference and tries to

find an identity which incorporates both his cultural belonging and reality.

This negotiation does not last for long, however. When Shahid debates his cultura l

affiliation with Deedee, she shouts at him straightforwardly, “You’ve got to decide, Shahid –

who really are your people?”(Kureichi 71; act 1, scene 9) 113 . Shahid seems to be unable to

decide, but later on when his friends plan to take down Deedee, he runs to warn her. This

decision puts an end to his dual identification. He is now accused by his former friends, his

former people, to be “the infidel, the traitor” (Kureichi 106; act 2, scene 13) 114 , “a raving evil

spirit and a double agent!” (Kureichi 99; act 2, scene 12) 115 . In short, he has betrayed his

Pakistani belonging and embraced Englishness with Deedee.

The transformation that has occurred in Shahid’s identity is evident in the play. When

he arrived in England, he is a lost self, a character without identity. His meeting with Raiz gives

him hope, a sense of belonging. Upon meeting Deedee, however, Shahid is at a loss again, and

shows an inability to decide which identity to claim. The two identities between which he is

caught are in total opposition, a situation which forces him to choose between the two. Neither

Raiz nor Deedee accept Shahid’s double agency, the reason for which Shahid undertakes a

journey of self-discovery. When Raiz condemns Shahid’s affiliation with Deedee, he asks him

111 Ibid. 87; act 2, scene 10

112 Ibid. 40; act 1, scene 4

113 Ibid. 71; act 1, scene 9

114 Ibid. 106; act 2, scene 13

115 Ibid. 99; act 2, scene 12

such questions as, “Do you want to stand always alone? Or be one with the ummah that is your

heart’s only family?” (Kureichi 107; act 2, scene 13)116 , Shahid replies, “I’ll find my own

ummah, thanks” (Ibid.). This answer implies a maturity and a self-responsibility, which is

evident only at the end of the play. Shahid conforms to neither of the two pulling forces, his

culture and the English culture; he is somehow trying to find ‘his self’ somewhere ‘in-between’,

on the border of the two cultural realms. By rejecting his friends, he is cutting directly with his

cultural roots, but his racial difference from the English makes him unable to claim fully the

English identity.

It has been amply elaborated the extent to which the main character in Lahiri’s “The

Third and Final Continent”, the speaker in Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa”, and The

main character in Kureichi’s play The Black Album, are condemned to fighting on two fronts.

Theirs are split identities, in which the difference between the origins and host cultures are,

sometimes, reconciled117 , and at other times exploited violently118 . The question that arises,

however, is whether a complete and total split with the origins is possible; in other words, is it

possible for the characters to draw a line between their cultural and historical identity, and the

identity of the country in which they now reside? Is there anything as a “pure origin”, to which

they could go back, or a pure “Englishness” which they can easily embrace? These questions

are the subject matter of the following section.

116 Ibid. 107; act 2, scene 13

117 In The case of the narrator in “The Third and Final Continent”, whose cultural difference does not stand in
opposition with the culture of America.

118 As is the case of Shahid in The Black Album. The two identities he is trying to claim cannot reconcile their
differences, and thus, cannot coexist.
 2. Essentially Hybrid.

Having dealt with the split of loyalty and identity of the characters in the three fictional works

under analysis, it is a must to investigate the way those characters reconcile that split and

manage to negotiate the differences between their cultural identity and the cultural framework

of the country into which they moved. Indeed, such a split cannot last forever, for such a

situation would lead the characters to feel at a loss. They have become aliens, strangers and

outsiders from the culture of their homeland, and they are at the same time unable to fully

subscribe to the culture of their ‘new home’. This dilemma leads the characters to claim a third

model of identity, one that exists on the borders between their homeland’s cultural identity and

that of the new home’s cultural identity. They cannot reject both; therefore, they decide to find

a space of enunciation in that ‘third-space’ in which difference is emulated for the sake of a

new coherent identity. The hybrid model of identity is the main concern of this section. The

question to be discussed is; to what extent do the characters seek this hybrid model ?

2.1. Hybrid Identities

In Lahiri’s “The Third and Final Continent”, the question of hybridity is conspicuous in the

journey undertaken by the unnamed character in the short story. His first journey’s destinatio n

was England, and it is there that the events of the story started. His first days in London do not

show any signs of any easy assimilation of the English cultural life. He found himself in what

might be called a ‘small India’ in England. When this ‘small India’ is fragmented as “[e]very

now and then someone in the house moved out, to live with a woman whom his family back in

Calcutta had determined he was to wed” (Lahiri 190) 119 , the protagonist finds himself facing a

world strange to him. When he is offered a job in America, he spares no times to know as much

119 Lahiri Jhumpa, “The Third and Final Continent”, in Interpreter of Maladies: 190.
as he can about the culture of that country120 , so that he would easily assimilate the new cultura l

forms he is to encounter. Landing in America, the narrator meets Mrs. Croft whose significa nce

lies the way she stands for a global culture, a culture that is both Western and Eastern121 . The

protagonist affiliates himself with Mrs. Croft and develops a strong admiration for her 122 . The

arrival of his wife, Mala, at Boston forces the protagonist the leave Mrs. Croft’s house and

move to live with his wife. However, he constantly pays visits to Mrs. Croft and mourns for her

death. The protagonist moves from one geographical place to another, from one house to

another, from one culture to another, only to settle in an identity that incorporates both cultures

and eliminates none. It is a hybrid model that allows the protagonist to live in two worlds

simultaneously.

It is noteworthy that Lahiri in her short story expresses a deep concern about the Indian

identity, or rather, the loss of that Identity, in the struggle of the Indian people to become

American. The ability of the protagonist in her short story to live on two fronts and negotiate

the difference between his Indian identity and the American culture, is an attempt from him to

keep his Indian heritage from decay. This concern is voiced by the protagonist at the end of the

short story, when he mentions his concern about his son who has become absorbed by the

American way of life and more distant from his Indian origins. In an attempt to keep ties

between the son and his Indian roots, the protagonist tries to expose him to the Indian cultura l

heritage in America, “we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so

that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak in Bengali, things we sometimes worry

he will no longer do after we die” (Lahiri 215)123 . Culture lives through its people who identify

120
“During the flight I read The Student Guide to North America,” (Lahiri 190).

121 As has been already mentioned, Mrs. Croft is a typical American woman imbued with typical Indian values.

122 The main source of his admiration is the age of the woman and her self-pride.

123 Ibid. 215.

themselves with it and preserve it. When the protagonist is concerned that when he and his wife

die, the Indian culture and identity would die with them, he is expressing a global concern about

the nature of identity itself.

It is not only the protagonist who yields to a hybrid identity, but also his wife. Upon

Mala’s arrival at the U.S, The free end of her sari did not drag on the floor, but was draped in a

sign of bridal modesty over her head” (Lahiri 209)124 , a custom expected of every Indian woman

to do. By the end of the story, however, “Mala no longer drapes the end of her sari over her

head” (Lahiri 215)125 . This obvious transmutation in the character of Mala does not mean that

she has decided to abandon the Indian identity altogether; rather, she is trying to reconcile the

two cultures, the Indian by wearing the sari, and the American, by no longer draping it over her

head. This is only one example of the various changes that occur in the identity of the characters

when they moved from their Indian context to the American one. When the protagonist declares

that “[they] are American citizens now” (Lahiri 215)126 , he does not mean that they have

become entirely American; their citizenship, national identity, has become American, but part

of their cultural identity is still faithful to India. Their identity no longer yields to a single

affiliation but to a double affiliation which is not colored by a sense of opposition, but rather, a

sense of coexistence. They have managed to live in two cultures, claim two identities, and live

on the borders.

While the relationship between the protagonist in Lahiri’s story and his cultural origins

is a direct one127 , Walcott’s speaker is unable to affiliate himself with neither of the two cultures

he is caught between. Lahiri’s characters have a precedent origin, one which they can identify

124 Ibid. 209.

125 Ibid. 215

126 Ibid. 215

127 That is, he is able to identify himself as an Indian, but is forced to create for himself a different identity model
to cope with a new geographical and cultural sphere, America.
themselves with easily, but the speaker in “A Far Cry from Africa” cannot seem to easily find

that precedent origin. His origins are hybrid128 , and so is his identity.

It is useful to regard the hybrid model of the speaker’s identity as a direct result of the

colonial experience. The speaker’s hybrid identity incorporates both that of the colonizer and

colonized. Both histories and cultures constitute his identity.

Throughout the whole poem, the speaker exploits the brutalities of both cultures, that of

the British role in Africa, and the Kiyuko towards the British. He cannot sympathize with either

of them, as he sees them both as carrying pros and cons, which further complicates his decision

to take on a single identity. His dilemma is even more transparent when he exclaims his love of

both his African roots and cultural heritage, and the English language and education, “[. . .] how

choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?”(Walcott 30-31)129 . This line

reflects so conspicuously the hybrid nature of the speaker’s identity. It is split between two

cultures and origins, but this split is not wholly oppositional; it is rather complimentary. The

speaker’s cultural and racial identity is African and English; his roots are African and Englis h

and his sense of self is torn between the two. The poem’s tone suggests the turbulence that

resides within the speaker’s self-identification. The speaker seems to be looking for a type of

identity which is stable, fixed and ‘single-originated’. This Turbulence originates, in part, from

the bloody history that relates both cultures. Unlike Lahiri’s character, who is caught between

two cultures which are not totally oppositional, the speaker in Walcott’s poem lives on very

unstable borders. It is this state which pushes him to ponder on the idea of rejecting both

identities, both cultures at once and establishing a new, totally different form of identity,

128 “I who am poisoned with the blood of both” (Walcott 26).

129 Dereck Walcott, “A Far Cry from Africa”, in Collected Poems 1948-1984: 30-31
“Betray them both, or give back what they give?”(Walcott 32) 130 Both cultures are equally

important for the speaker; therefore, he can but live with both of them in his ‘veins’.

The division in the speaker’s identity gives rise to a third model of identity. The divis io n,

itself, is an identity. It is an identity which incorporates the historical and cultural heritage of

both cultures. It is an identity that is neither African, nor English. It is an identity that exists

somehow between the two. Since the African and British identities constitute two differe nt,

oppositional, spaces, the speaker is located in a ‘third space’, both inside and outside the

aforementioned spaces.

The idea that ambivalence gives rise to a new model of identity, one which incorporates

both identities without excluding any of them, is reiterated in Walcott’s poem and, though to a

lesser extent, in Lahiri’s short story. Kureichi’s play The Black Album presents another case of

double identification, a strong ambivalence and undecided-ability that results in a new

affiliation, a new identity.

Like the protagonist in Lahiri’s “Third and Final Continent”, Shahid attempts to affir m

his Pakistani identity in London. He, at first, attempts to associate himself with other Pakistani

immigrants like himself, to give him a sense of belonging to a single community. Raiz, Hat,

Chad and Tahira, all represent the typical Pakistani identity, which is strictly religious. Shahid’s

identification with the group is noticeable when he accepts that they hold meetings in his dwell

(Koreishi 24; act 1, scene 2)131 . Later on, when he is asked to help the group take vengeance

for the old Pakistani man who has been wronged by some white boys, he goes with them, albeit

hesitantly, with a sense of admiration for their unity. His identification with the group, however,

does not go without a sense of contradiction. For instance, he cannot stop listening to music,

130 Ibid. 32

131 Hanif Kureichi, The Black Album: 24; act 1, scene 2

though it is considered by his friends to be a ‘sin’( Kureichi 39)132 , and he reads the book of the

author his friends despise the most, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. This sense of

belonging and not belonging to the group is fully exploited when he leaves them to join his

lover, Deedee, have wine and indulge in drugs. An ambivalence so obvious, a split of

personality so deep and a sense of a lack of belonging forces Shahid to choose a third identity.

One that is neither wholly western, English, nor extremely Pakistani, like his friends.

The development of Shahid’s character, from someone who can easily be identified by

others, to another who can identify himself, is scrutinized in the play, especially when Shahid

responds to Raiz by saying, “I’ll find my own Ummah, thanks!” (Kureichi 107; act 2, scene

13)133 This statement expresses the first stages of Shahid’s self-discovery and the beginning of

a journey for a new hybrid identity, which does not necessitate a full affiliation with neither the

English nor the Pakistani identity.

It might be argued that Shahid’s final identity is westernized, more than hybridized. His

last words addressing Deedee, however, solve such a problematic. “I want to see my mother.

Come with me? Then we can go to the sea – I know a place. I’ve decided. I know what to write”

(Kureichi 111; act 2, scene 13)134 . In this statement, two acts should be taken into consideratio n.

The act of visiting “[his] mother” and the act of writing. The first act signals a going back to

the origin, a search for the self in the past, while the act of writing, as a western way of

expression135 , indicates an engagement in the ‘other’ culture, and an acquisition of another

identity. Therefore, Shahid’s identity, which is still rooted in Pakistan, but is colored by

Englishness, is obviously hybridized.

132 Ibid. 39.

133 Hanif, Kureichi. The Black Album: 107; act 2, scene 13

134 Ibid. 111; act 2, scene 13

135 The act of writing is condemned by Shahid’s friends, most notably, Chad and Hat.
 The three works that have been discussed focus on the idea of the hybrid nature of

identity, yet the characters at first show signs of unsatisfaction with and discomfort at the idea

of hybridity. Their tendency towards essentialist identifications are the subject matter of the

following section.

2.2. Against Essential Identities

It is noticeable in the works under analysis the attempt of the characters to affiliate themselves

with single origins. The impossibility of this affiliation is what gives rise to the hybrid identities

discussed earlier.

The protagonist in Lahiri’s “Third and Final Continent” is not offering an ‘essentially

Indian identity”, which cannot change at the encounter of other cultural forms; he is, rather,

offering a hybrid model, that would survive in all cultures, at all times. The hybrid model of

identity adopted by the protagonist is an attempt to avoid the essentialist understanding of

identity that resists change, and seeks sameness and inalterability. When in London, the

protagonist chooses to live with “penniless Bengali bachelors” who, by virtue of the sameness

of their origins, can offer him a sense of belonging, a sense of ‘home away from home’. He is

not ready, yet, to fully engage with the ‘other’ culture and is cautious not to lose his cultura l

affiliation with India. His essential Indian origins prevent him from subscribing to other

cultures, the English culture, which would force him to negotiate his own sense of the self for

the sake of the new reality he has come to live in. It is this negotiation of difference that the

protagonist avoids by seeking refuge with other Indians. It is, indeed, the objective of

postcolonial subjects to (re)affirm their sense of identity at the moment of arriving at the once-

colonizing world. Tracing the change that occurs in the characters’ sense of the self, however,

an essential ‘Indian-ness’ in the ‘new world’ proves to be an impossibility. The Indian identity

melts into the American identity to produce a hybrid identity that tolerates the existence of both.
 The same tendency towards and impossibility of the reaffirmation of essentialis t

identities is manifest in Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa”.

The speaker’s desire for a stable and fixed identity, origin, is not fulfilled and, obviously,

cannot be attained. As a postcolonial subject, he is destined to a hybrid existence, to belonging

and unbelonging, to a sense of homelessness and crisis of identity. The history of the speaker

does not allow him to lay claim for any essentialist form of identity. He is neither essentially an

African, nor essentially an English. He is torn between the two, and by so, he is breaking the

bounds of essentialist identities. “I who am poisoned with the blood of both,” (Walcott 26) 136 a

statement which puts so bluntly the genetic hybridity of the speaker, breaks any essentialist

notions of race. The speaker, in a sense, is determined to be a hybrid subject. The tone of the

poem supports the argument that the speaker’s thoughts are haunted with the idea of a single

origin, which would spare the speaker such agony and suffering. Hybridity, in as far as it is

linked with agony and misery, is seen in a negative light by the speaker. His description of his

hybrid / mixed blood as a poison further strengthens the idea that the speaker cannot come to

terms with the reality of his hybrid existence. The speaker’s regretful attitude towards the

hybridity he has been inflected with does not, however, defy the fact that his identity is hybrid.

In Kureichi’s play, it is obvious that Shahid celebrates his hybrid identity. This,

however, does not exclude the fact that he has a tendency to affiliate himself with one single

origin. He, too, has a tendency to accompany the people who would give him a sense of ‘home

away from home’. He sees in Raiz the typical conservative Pakistani. Although he rejects such

conservatism, he finds in his friends other characteristics with whom he can identify, namely

those of solidarity, unity, and language. His friends give him that sense of belonging to a group,

of being an essentially Pakistani. It is in this essentialism that Shahid finds comfort. Having

been introduced to the western culture, through Deedee, however, Shahid’s sense of the self is

136 Dereck Walcott, ‘’A Far Cry from Africa’’, in Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-19984: 26.
shaken to the core. He no longer thinks of himself as being only a Pakistani. He is no longer

satisfied with what the Pakistani culture can offer him; therefore, he chooses to add another

culture to his list. The choice of breaking the bounds of his culture, of crossing the borders, of

adopting a new different culture, is a complete rejection of the essential identity he used to have.

His is a journey for an identity that is not defined, already sat awaiting him to subscribe into it;

it is, rather, a journey for a new identity which defies all essentialist assumptions about identity;

an identity that is constantly in the making.

In this section, it has been argued that the nature of the character’s identity is hybrid.

Contributing to that hybridity are encounters with other cultural forms and agencies in differe nt

places and at different times. The inability of the characters to remain the same, to keep an

essential identity, at the encounter of other cultures is exploited quite conspicuously in the

works discussed. The events of the Lahiri’s story and Kureichi’s play allow the reader to trace

the different transformations that occur in the identity of the characters. Walcott’s poem,

however, is an outcry, a direct exclamation about hybridity and the heritage of colonial

experience. All the works, however, circle around the idea of an anti-essentialist, post-

modernist, understanding of identity. One of the main conditions of identity formations in the

three works is that of displacement and dispersal. The characters’ movement from one place to,

their homelands, to another, the host lands, contributes largely to the fragmentation and

hybridization of their identity. The condition of the diaspora is marked by a deep loss of identity

and a nostalgia that colors the characters identity in the new homeland. This idea has been

alluded to in the very beginning of this section, and is elaborated in the following section.
 3. Postcolonial Diasporas: The Legacy of Colonialism

The subject matter that has been discussed so far is the idea of an identity which is no longer

the same once displaced. The causes of this displacement may multiply, but the focus of this

section is that displacement and alienation caused by the experience of colonialism. The

literatures under analysis are all written within the framework of postcolonialism. Analyzing

the aspects of diaspora in these works, therefore, is a key step towards an understanding of the

legacy of colonial experience and its impact upon the once-colonized (in this case, the Africans,

Caribbeans and the Pakistani diasporas). Lahiri, Walcott and Kureichi are all diaspora writers,

whose personal experiences shape much of their fictional productions. Their works are

saturated by feelings of alienation, loss and nostalgia. Their experiences as postcolonial subjects

living in the heart of the empire are reflected in their works so conspicuously that one cannot

resist the itch to see the characters in their works as direct reflections of their (the writers’)

reality. Here, however, that itch must be resisted for the sake of an objective approach to their

works. The main concern of this section is the investigation of elements of diaspora in the works

of the aforementioned writers, and the rendering clear of the elements of their subject and

identity formation, or loss.

1.1.1. Without Origins: Displacement as Loss

In the works under analysis, the movement of the characters from their cultures towards other

cultures engenders a sense of loss and alienation from both their cultures of origin and the

cultures to which they have moved, a state which results in a deep ambivalence and results in a

hybrid existence that conforms to no particular cultural form137 . It is that feeling of loss,

however, that is scrutinized in this section as one of the most common characteristics of the

diaspora.

137 In section 2, the idea of hybridity has been amply elaborated.

 “The Third and Final Continent” gives birth to a character already lost, whose Indian

origins have almost been diminished, and a new culture has been adopted. This is not obvious

at the very outset of the story, but when the protagonist moves from England to settle in the

U.S, it becomes evident the impact of Englishness upon the character. It is as though the

protagonist has become entirely English, and his sense of loss is no longer caused by his

distance from India, but rather, from London. When he arrives at Boston, his attitude towards

the new cultural form he has been exposed to spares no place for his Indian identity. The

following extract from the short story renders clear that loss of origin that the character suffers :

I learned that Americans drove on the right side of the road, not the left, and that they called a lift an
elevator and an engaged phone busy. “The pace of life in North America is different from Britain as you
will soon discover,” the guidebook informed me. “Everybody feel she must get to the top. Don’t expect
an English cup of tea.” (Lahiri 190)138 .

Here, the character makes no mention of his Indian culture and origin. He has become entirely

absorbed by the British culture, for which reason his only model of identification is British.

This sense of Englishness fades as the character indulges himself in the American way of life.

It is a constant movement from one culture to another, from one identity to another, a constant

dispersal and alienation from the culture of origin, a continuous loss of his ‘Indian-ness’.

The idea of hybridity, which has been discussed earlier, is not entirely favored when it comes

to the diaspora context. The celebration of hybridity ignores the relations of powers between

the two cultures; the American culture is much more alluring compared to the Indian culture, a

situation caused by the denigration that Indian culture underwent through the experience of

colonization. When the protagonist expresses a concern that his son would lose any traces of

his Indian culture and identity, he does that because he knows precisely that the Indian culture

can hardly survive in the American context. The Indian identity, indeed, is lost the American

context.

138 Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third and Final Continent,” in Lahiri, Interpreter of maladies. 190
 The idea of power relations in the realm of culture and identity is reiterated in Walcott’s

poem, as well. The fact that the speaker cannot distance himself from the “English tongue”

indicates a linguistic loss, a loss of the mother tongue. It is not so easy for the speaker to part

with English and adhere to his mother tongue. The adoption of the English language engenders

in the speaker a sense of loss and a feeling of alienation from his African identity. In fact, the

idea of language in the postcolonial diasporic context is one of prominent importance. Some

postcolonial writers and critics, the Kenyan critic and writer Ngugi wa thiong'o and the Indian

poet and critic Rajagopal Parthasarathy, for instance, abandoned English and turned to writing

in their mother tongue. This decision, however, has not always been easy for the postcolonia l

subjects to take. The impact of English language on the identity formation of the once-colonized

is so profound that their sense of completeness and particularity melts into the global spheres

of Englishness. The speaker’s loss of language, therefore, is an indication of a greater loss, a

loss of whole culture.

The loss of language and cultural affiliation with his African origins render the speaker

an alienated self, a lost individual, who is both an insider and outsider, an insider for being of

African descent, and an outsider for favoring English language at the expense of his mother

tongue. He is, as well, an outsider from the English culture as he is not a “white Englishma n”,

and an insider for speaking the language. He is, in a sense, “almost the same [as the Englis h],

but not quite”139 . This condition renders the speaker a lost self which occupies a position

without identity.

The impact of colonial experience is evident in the experience voiced in Walcott’s poem.

It is an, somehow, incorporating a multitude of voices, the voices of those who have been

uprooted from their origins by colonialism and who are now struggling to find a place for them

139 Bhabh’s phrase to describe the end product of the process of mimicry.
in the new world. It is their conviction that their origins are unattainable, but they keep fighting

on, trying to reaffirm their existence, and ‘write back to the empire’ from the inside.

Kureichi’s play The Black Album presents a different kind of loss, however. The aspect

of linguistic alienation is present within the play, but the loss of religious affiliation is more

pertinent in the case of the main character. Shahid abandons the religion of his nation and

embraces an English attitude. Though he keeps the ties with his Pakistani origins, the encounter

with the ‘other’ culture brings about a change in the identity formation of Shahid. Again, the

idea of power relations is present within the play. Shahid moves to England, particularly, to

finish his higher studies. The motive behind his movement is, by all means, a colonial legacy.

English is the center. A statement by Brownlow makes clear the centrality of England and the

western civilization as a whole for the once-colonized. When Raiz denigrates the Western

civilization for its lack of morality, Brownlow responds by pointing out that the west brought

“science, psychoanalysis, a stable political culture, organised sport – at a pretty high level”

(Kureichi 59; act 1, scene 8)140 . The centrality of the west implies essentially the marginality of

the rest; the centrality of the English identity is maintained at the expense of Shahid’s Pakistani

identity.

The condition of the diaspora in the ‘new motherland’ is colored by a deep loss of

cultural identity. This loss is the result of the historical relationship between the culture of the

once-colonized and that of the once-colonizers, a relationship that is based on power relations

and superior/inferior binarism. The characters in the works discussed all have the blood of the

once-colonized running through their veins. This makes the condition of the diaspora very

problematic in the new world in that they always regard themselves as being inferior to the

“whiteman”, and so they always attempt to subscribe to the ‘other’ culture and identity.

140 Hanif, Kureichi. The Black Album. 59; act 1, scene 8.

 3.2. Different Diasporas, Common Experience

The works under analysis offer a variety of experiences that serve to develop a better

understanding of the condition of diaspora and diasporic identity. The multiplicity of

experiences, modes of expression and the historical contexts invite a comparative study

between these works and an investigation of their commonalities. The objective of this section

is to comparatively study the three works in an attempt to render visible the common concerns

of these different diasporas.

Lahiri’s Indian diasporic short story and Kureichi’s play present to a large extent similar

experiences. Both of them trace the life of a character and the different conditions that form and

alter his identity. Lahiri’s protagonist and Shahid are two characters whose lives have been

shaped largely by the historical fact of colonization. They went in quest for change, for a

betterment of their conditions. They settled in the ‘host’ land, and decided to stay. Their

decision, however, is not an easy task. They had to deal with the new culture and understand it.

In the process of doing so, their own sense of cultural identity changes. Their identities have

been infected by the culture of the host land. Their sense of belonging to a homeland has been

diminished at the encounter of other cultures. Lahiri’s protagonist makes it clear that “we [they]

have decided to grow old here [America]” (Lahiri 215)141 . Their decision to grow up in America

is an expression of their strong affiliation with the host country, as much as it is an expression

of their ‘homelessness’. Kureichi’s play advances more or less the same claim. A conversatio n

between Shahid and his brother Chili, expresses the idea of Shahid’s homelessness quite

accurately, when Chili says “You can’t never go back home” (Kureichi 52; act 1, scene 7)142 .

141 Jhumpa, Lahiri. “The Third and Final Continent”. In Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies. 215

142 Hanif Kureichi. The Black Album. 52; act 1, scene 7

The writer’s voice could be heard addressing his protagonist. He can never go back home. The

diaspora, indeed, is destined to a state of alienation and non-belonging.

Walcott’s poem, however, presents a different experience and attitude. While Lahiri’s

protagonist and Shahid decided to go in search of another homeland ‘overseas’, Walcott’s

speaker seems not to have had the advantage of making such a decision. “I who am poisoned

with the blood of both” (Walcott 27)143 , states clearly that the speaker is of a mixed origin. He

is both English and African long before he was born, a situation which furthers the complexity

of the speaker’s identity.

It could be argued that Walcott’s poem voices the situation of the second-generatio n

diasporas who find themselves already “poisoned with the blood” of two cultures. Lahir i’s

protagonist, however, represents the first generation of diaspora who strive to keep strong ties

with their nation and national identities. Walcott’s poem is a voice of an Afro-American, while

Lahiri’s protagonist and Shahid accept no easy labelling.

The fact that colonization brought a new generation into existence is, in the case of the

diaspora, undeniable. The generation to which that experience gave birth, however, is a lost

generation, in a constant search for a ‘homeland’. Colonization uprooted whole generations of

people and made them forever struggling for an affirmed identity. The identity of their

homeland has been damaged vigorously, and denigrated to the extent that they strive to

disassociate themselves from it and claim the identity of the colonizers. This disassociation is

even more intensified as those people move from their lands of origin in search of an identity

that resides overseas. Their sense of emancipation is always ‘there’; the ‘here’ does not exist;

it is but a metaphor, a non-existent reality. They are in an endless journey to land ‘there’; their

journey never comes to an end, and their identity is forever dispersed.

143 Dereck Walcott, ‘’A Far Cry from Africa’’, in Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-19984, 27.
 The works which have been discussed are but a sample of the larger literary archives

that have been produced by the one-colonized diaspora. The use of the ‘postcolonial’ in

conjunction with the ‘diaspora’ has been a difficult task indeed. The fact of colonization still

governs their identity formation, so that a talk about the ‘post’ in the context of the diaspora

might be considered immature. The labelling of those diasporas as ‘postcolonial’, however,

proves inevitable as the work conducted is encapsulated in the postcolonial studies realm.
 Conclusion

It has been amply elaborated the extent to which the identity of the diaspora and the

displaced is complex. Discussing such a complex phenomenon in essentialist terms, one risks

to fall into reductionism and simplification. The theories brought to discuss the identity of the

diaspora were not at random, as they were carefully chosen to tackle the issue of identity from

diverse angels.

It has been explained how the essentialist theories reduce the notion of identity to a

single essence, a perspective which could be valid to a certain extent, as it has been argued in

“Essentially Hybrid”, but whose ahistorical approach fails to form any convincing argument

about the constantly changing essence of the diaspora and the displaced. The constructivist

theories, however, might seem at first to be adaptable to the situation of the diaspora;

constructively speaking, all identities are contextually constructed, denying by so the existence

of any preceding essence or authentic identity. This position, therefore, denies the postcolonia l

subject an agency, while the essentialist discourse ascribes to the postcolonial subject a passive

agency all the way through. This dilemma in theory has been resolved partially by resorting to

Homi K Bhabha’s conception of identity and theorization of hybridity. The validity of Bhabha’s

theory of hybridity in the diaspora context has been examined through the works analyzed in

this paper. The identities of the characters in the works analyzed prove to be hybrid. However,

even the hybrid model constitutes a problematic for the postcolonial diasporic subject.

Belonging to a tribe is always better than belonging partially to two tribes, and thus, to none. It

is this dilemma that has been explored by the different diaspora writers, the dilemma of

unbelonging when belonging to more than just one pole.

It has become quite clear throughout this research that reducing the question of the

identity of the diaspora to the assumptions of one theory results in a damaging simplificatio n,
the results of which are very unreliable and biased. The only way out of this dark tunnel of the

“simplifying theory” is to bring different theories and merge them together to approach the

issue of identity in a much more objective and reliable way.

The works upon which we have based our analysis remain but a sample of the bigger

archives of postcolonial diaspora literature, archives which embody different experiences,

different outcries, the cause of which is but one and the same, colonialism.
 Works Cited

Aronowitz, Stanley. "Reflections On Identity". The Question of Identity. John Rajchman. New

York: Routlege, 1995. Print

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and

Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Print

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, and Bill Ashcroft. Postcolonial Studies: The Key

Concepts. n.p., n.d. Print

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: SAGE, 2000. PRINT

Bernauer, James William., and David M. Rasmussen. The Final Foucault. Cambridge, MA:

MIT, 1988. Print

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print

Bhabha., Homi.K. “The Other Question”, The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.

Print

Brewer, Daniel. The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment.: n.p., n.d. Print

Brooker, Peter, and Peter Brooker. A Glossary of Cultural Theory. London: Arnold, 2002. Print

Childs, Peter, and Patrick Williams. An Introduction to Post-colonial Theory. London: Prentice

Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1997. Print

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: U of Washington, 1997. Print

David Chariandy. “Postcolonial Diasporas” (In The Postcolonial Text 2.1). Web

Dillet, Benoît, Iain M. Mackenzie, and Robert Porter. The Edinburgh Companion to

Poststructuralism : n.p., n.d. Print

Dunn, Robert G. Identity Crises: A Social Critique of Postmodernity. Minneapolis: U of

Minnesota, 1998. Print

E., Iyall Smith Keri, and Patricia Leavy. Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical

Examinations. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Print

Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove,

1965. Print

Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. New York: Routledge,

1989. Print

Hall, Stuart, and Paul Du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage, 1996. PRINT.

Hall, Stuart. "Identity and Difference." Identity and Difference: Critical Statements. Web. Mar.

2016

Hall, Stuart. "Old And New Identities, Old And New Ethnicities". In D. King Culture,

globalization, and the world-system: contemporary conditions for the representation of

identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Print

Hawley, John C. Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. Print

Katharyne Mitchell. “Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity.” (In Environment and

Planning D: Society and Space).Web

Knowles, Caroline. Race and Social Analysis. London: SAGE, 2003. Print

Kureichi,Hanif. The Black Album, 2010

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “The Third and Final Continent”, in Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladie, 1999

Liebmann, Mathew. “Postcolonial Cultural Affiliation: Essentialism, Hybridity, and

NAGPRA”. In Matthew, and Uzma Z. Rizvi (Ed.), Archaeology and the Postcolonial

Critique. Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2008. Print

Loomba, Ania. “Colonial and Postcolonial Identitie s”, Colonialism Postcolonialism.London:

Routledge, 1998. Print

Lucy, Niall. A Derrida Dictionary. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print

Maalouf, Amin. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. New York: Arcade,

2001. Print
Omoniyi, Tope, and Goodith White. The Sociolinguistics of Identity. London: Continuum,

2006. Print

Phillips, Anne. "What's Wrong with Essentialism?" Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of

Social Theory 11.1 (2010): Web. 47-60. 26 Mar. 2016

Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange. Lanham, MD: Rowman

& Littlefield, 2004. Print

Quayson, Ato. Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process? N.p.: n.p., n.d. PRINT.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. Print

Shackleton, Mark. Diasporic Literature and Theory--where Now? Newcastle upon Tyne, UK:

Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2008. Print

Syrotinski, Michael. Deconstruction and the Postcolonial: At the Limits of Theory. Liverpool:

Liverpool UP, 2007. Print

Walcott, Dereck. . “A Far Cry from Africa”, in Dereck Walcott Collected Poems, 1962.

Werbner, Pnina, and Tariq Modood. Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-cultural Identities and

the Politics of Anti-racism. London: Zed, 1997. Print

Williams, James. Understanding Poststructuralism. Chesham, Bucks: Acumen Pub., 2005.

Print

Wortham, Simon. The Derrida Dictionary. London: Continuum, 2010. Print

Wright, Michelle M. Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora. Durham:

Duke UP, 2004. Print

Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. London: Routledge,

1995. Print