This thesis contains a detailed study of contemporary South Asian diasporic literary and cinematic works in English. The majority of the works analyzed and discussed are those produced from the 1980s onwards. My research investigates how selected diasporic texts and films from South Asia problematize representations of homeland and host spaces. I reveal in the course of this study, how these works, actively negotiate alternative modalities of belonging that celebrate the plurality of cultural identities within and outside the homeland. This exploration of diasporic narratives of homeland and host land is explored by examining these narratives across two mediums: the cinematic and the literary. In so doing, the thesis initiates a dialogue between the two mediums and locates these selected diasporic works within a larger tapestry of contemporary cultural, literary and global contexts. The thesis shows that these literary and filmic representations celebrate as well as present an incisive critique of the different cultural spaces they inhabit. The thesis also reveals how, in representing the experiences of multiple-linguistic, geographical, historical dislocations, these texts invite readers to see the changing faces of diasporic cultures and identities. My thesis complements this analysis of representation with a broader analysis of the reception of these diasporic works. My analysis sets out to move away from the critical tendency to scrutinize texts in relation to a politicized rhetoric of reception which privileges a reading of texts through insider/outsider binarism, by drawing together and contrasting academic and popular responses in the reception of diasporic texts. In so doing, my thesis reads these texts as agents of cultural production, focusing on interpretative possibilities of the literary critical mode of reading and enabling nuanced modes of analysis attentive to issues of diasporic identity, the identity of nation-states and the emergent global dynamics of migrant narratives. The texts I analyze are Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight's Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988), Micheal Ondaatje‘s Running in the Family (1982) and Anil's Ghost (2000), Rohinton Mistry‘s A Fine Balance (1995), Mohsin Hamid‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), and Hanif Kureishi‘s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and as well as two filmic texts, Mira Nair‘s The Namesake (2007) and Gurinder Chadha‘s Bend It Like Beckham (2001).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:731269 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Kaushik, Ratika |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/73136/ |
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