earticle

영어

Recent diaspora studies, which investigate historical, political and cultural importance of migration and diasporas, tend to focus on the interlocking issues of identity and assimilation by categorizing the features of diasporic subjectivity and hybridity. That is, current diaspora studies are prone to confine its subject matters to identity crisis and assimilation by categorizing diverse modes of diaspora into one identical entity, which reveal a lack of consideration of complex issues of diasporic identity and hybridity. However, in this essay I argue that the way in which Indian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri composes the stories of Interpreter of Maladies is intended to criticize and challenge the existing categorical conceptualization and theorization of diasporic identity and hybridity. I claim that Lahiri’s stories collectively serve to complicate the issues of diasporic identity and hybridity by representing the ambiguous existential dimensions and aspects of diaspora in reality. The purpose of this essay is to shed a new light on how Lahiri represents the underlying ambiguities that are formative of diasporic identity and hybridity so as to disprove the formulaic categorization of a diversity of diasporic subjects. Therefore, identity and hybridity are not effects of diaspora but its constitutive conditions.