Abstract
This article carries out a (con-) textual analysis of cultural crossings, with a particular focus on the notions of assimilation and syncretism, in certain of Jhumpa Lahiri’s diasporic writings. By...
Highlights
Stuart Hall’s description of America as the juncture point where “assimilation and syncretism” are negotiated is significant in the context of the portrayal of diaspora experience by contemporary South Asian American literary writers (2007, pp. 136–7)
This article seeks to carry out a textual analysis of the cultural crossings in South Asian American diasporic literature with a particular focus on the notions of assimilation and religious syncretism that loom over the field
A panoptic reading of diasporic experiences in two of Lahiri’s stories revealed that through religious syncretism and cultural assimilation, the dominant culture of the new land is conferred upon the migrant characters with a substantial amount of disciplinary power that contributes to the surveillance and regulation of individuals’ behavior and the formation of social relations
Summary
Stuart Hall’s description of America as the juncture point where “assimilation and syncretism” are negotiated is significant in the context of the portrayal of diaspora experience by contemporary South Asian American literary writers (2007, pp. 136–7). To fully understand the panoptic functioning of power and the various ways Indian diasporic individuals exercise relatively autonomous technologies of the self to assimilate into the mainstream culture, it is crucial to explore the normative structure of the social-political context of the selected stories which revolve around the diasporic subjects’ daily experiences of the ruptures and the convergences between two cultures.
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