A DIASPORIC OVERCOAT?

Abstract

Starting as an analysis of the relation between (self)‐naming and (dis)‐affection in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, this paper suggests that the problems described and their critical reception can be seen to reflect more substantial problems permeating contemporary discussions around so‐called immigrant or diasporic literature and culture, and wider debates around multiculturalism and identity politics. It argues that discussions of diasporic literature are limited by the use of diaspora as an exclusive explanatory framework, neglecting the manifold, relational, and potentially conflicting dimensions of difference in cultural groups, as well as intercultural and transcultural differences and processes of differentiation. If used thus, the concept of diaspora does not suffice to explain and theorize some key aspects of what has come to be called diasporic literature.

Keywords:

• diaspora
• literature
• American
• immigration
• novel
• contemporary

Notes

1 Many reviews misrepresent aspects of the story by artificially opposing ordinary “native” experience and extraordinary immigrant experience: Gogol is inaccurately described “as hyphenated an American as his parents” (Kipen 2); his “experiences with girls and sex are affecting, blissfully ordinary” and his parents are “often stymied by low‐level bureaucrats” (Tilghman 1).

2 For example, Nelson argues for a “shared subcontinental experience and consciousness” (xi); Tapping contends that “writing by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent is concerned with personal and communal identity, recollection of the homeland, and the active response to this ‘new’ world” (285).

3 Zygmunt Bauman and Jonathan Friedman, for example, have used a more complex view of diaspora and migration, often rooted in quantitative research or ethnographic fieldwork, than literary critics. For a literary investigation their results are helpful reminders of complexity but seldom useful for analysis.

4 Numbers of immigrants depend on the source. Paranjape estimates c.11 million, but also claims that recent estimates figure c.20 million (232). The Statistical Abstract of the United States (2000) estimates c.11 million Asians, of which c.8 million are foreign born; South Asians make up c.1.679 million.

5 Forty‐three per cent of Asian Americans currently officially residing in the US—a higher percentage than for other US diasporas—have a BA or other higher degree (Statistical Abstracts of the United States). The average South Asian immigrant/diasporic is in the high socio‐economic bracket.

6 The novel is an elaboration of the short story “The Third and Final Continent” in Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.

7 For an excellent discussion see Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity 17–21.

8 It is ironic that he substitutes for his unwanted name “Gogol”, “Nikhil”, which echoes the Russian writer’s first name “Nikolay”.

9 Disaffection, expressed through anonymity, contrasts structurally to the novel’s opening, where not using her husband’s name is a token of affection for Ashima. Gogol and his wife Moushumi reverse their Indian tradition, or, more radically, abandon it during acculturation. Notably, as a couple, they have no Indian friends.

10 Mishra, for example, argues that diaspora is attractive because it is “not linked to the control of the nation’s social, political and cultural myths” (441). This is untrue especially of the US, whose immigrants constitute a defining and important aspect of national identity.

11 This also implies that the diasporic imaginary, or imaginaries, is/are at least as much a product of an “outside” of as of an “inside” of diaspora, in fact a complex field that offers itself up for identification and identity politics from a whole array of (subject) positions.

12 According to Jonathan Friedman, this “serious escalation of identity politics” reflects “declining global hegemony” as “new solidarities” form in an “era of increasing disorder” (233).

13 Most diasporic overcoats do not fit as well as they should. This is a potential experience in much personal and cultural identity “building”. In a rough paraphrase of Clyde Kluckhohn: everyone is simultaneously alike, the same and different. Zygmunt Bauman emphasizes that there can be no self‐determination without social solidarity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruediger Heinze

Ruediger Heinze is Assistant Professor in American Studies at Albert‐Ludwigs‐University, Freiburg. He has studied at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, and the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. His interests are in ethnic literature, superheroes and comics, ethical criticism, cultural theory and popular culture.