Resistance or Complicity: An Analysis of Ondaatje's Running in the Family as a Postcolonial Text

Abstract

According to Homi K. Bhahba, mimicry and hybridity are subversive strategies applied by colonized subjects to resist colonial domination that emerged as an ambivalent entity in its Janus faced mission of civilization and subjugation. This paper aims to explore the said postcolonial subversive strategies with reference to Micheal Ondaatje's memoir Running in the Family. Although Ondaatje's memoir is an emblematic diaspora's personal quest for his roots and identity in pre and post-colonial Sri Lanka, there is enough material in it in the form of characterization as well as direct insights which is open to analysis through a postcolonial lens. Using Bhahba’s concepts of mimicry,hybridity, and ambivalence as theoretical/analytical frame of reference, this article is an attempt to investigate how various fictive characters and their bearings in the selected memoir reflect these concepts:whether they are being used by the characters as resistance against the colonizers' hegemony or are merely being employed as strategies to survive and thrive under colonial rule.