From Third Space to Transnational: A Study of Alter Identities in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

Abstract

The burgeoning presence of the Indian Diaspora across the world has triggered a new consideration of the cultural theories of nation, identity and international affairs. Depicting the process of negotiating the borders, both physical borders of states and countries and the metaphorical borders, between genders generations and cultures, Bharati Mukherjee, an American writer of Indian origin, raises the question of space and identity of the Indian immigrants in the US. An attempt is made to map the journey of the Indian Diaspora from the status of the immigrants to that of the transnational citizens of the world. The scope of this study lies in its treatment of transnational space which is going to redefine the idea of Diaspora as a process of gain, contrary to conventional perspectives that construe immigration and displacement as a condition of terminal loss and dispossession, involving the erasure of history and the dissolution of an “original” culture. Rejecting the binaries of the Western Centre and the Eastern Periphery, the paper invites a post-structural approach to the cultural identity construction of the Indian Diaspora.