Abstract

In this paper I aim at analysing the composite, postcolonial, multicultural and transnational nature of identity emerging in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost , most prominently in the protagonist Anil Tissera. My work progresses through two distinct stages: in the first part I discuss the quality and inner contradictoriness of this developing form of identity using the tools of postcolonial criticism and diaspora studies , basically focusing my attention on the ways in which Anil’s identity undergoes modifications that may also appear ambiguous during her journey from Sri Lanka to England first and US later. Ideologically, that passage brings her from the periphery to the centre of the postcolonial world. In the second part of this paper I intend to shift my atten- tion on how Anil needs to come to terms with the conflicting issues at the very roots of her identity formation as an expatriate: in this section of my work I will also employ Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience , a fundamental text in trauma studies, in order to explain how the effects of past traumatic experiences are mainly responsible for disorientation and alienation in a diasporic subject. This dilemma becomes particularly manifest in the case of an exile’s home- coming, such as Anil Tissera in Anil’s Ghost . DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-104 Bibliography Bolland, John. 2004. Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost : Civil Wars, Mystics, and Rationalists. Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en Litterature Canadienne , 29, 2: 102-121. Brians, Paul. 2003. Modern South Asian Literature in English . Westport: Greenwood. Burton, Antoinette. 2003. Archive of Bones: Anil ’ s Ghost and the Ends of History. Journal of Commonwealth Literature , 38, 1: 39-56. Burrows, Victoria. 2008. The Heterotopic Spaces of Postcolonial Trauma in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost . Studies in the Novel , 40, 1-2: 161-177. Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cook, Victoria. 2005. Exploring Transnational Identities in Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost . Steven Totosy de Zepetnek ed. Comparative Cultural Studies and Michael Ondaatje’s Writing . West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 6-15. Davis, Emily S. 2009. Investigating Truth, History, and Human Rights in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil ’ s Ghost . Nels Pearson & Marc Singer eds. Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational World . Farnham: Ashgate, 15-30. Harting, Heike. 2003. Diasporic Cross-Currents in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk. Studies in Canadian Literature , 28, 1: 44-70. Mowat, Ryan. 2013. An Aesthetics of War: The Postcolonial Ethics of Anil’s Ghost. Journal of Postcolonial Writing , 49, 1: 28-39. Ondaatje, Michael. 2000. Anil’s Ghost. London: Picador. Quayson, Ato. 2013. Postcolonialism and the Diasporic Imaginary. Ato Quayson & Girish Daswani eds. A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism . Chichester: Blackwell, 139-159. Safran, William. 1991. Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return. Di- aspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies , 1, 1, Spring 1991: 83-99. Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2013. When the Diaspora Returns Home: Ambivalent Encounters with the Ethnic Homeland. Ato Quayson & Girish Daswani eds. A Companion to Diaspora and Trans- nationalism . Chichester: Blackwell, 172-189.

Highlights

  • : La finalità di questo saggio critico è quella di indagare sulla natura mista, postcoloniale, multiculturale e trasnazionale così come affiora nel romanzo Anil’s Ghost di Michael Ondaatje, con particolare attenzione alla protagonista Anil Tissera

  • Born in Sri Lanka, emigrated to England and to Canada, has over the years reflected on these themes through his diasporic characters

  • At 33, she is making her return home after “fifteen years” in the West, in London first and in Arizona later. Her initial contact whit her motherland is with a “young official”, offering her “no help” with her suitcases

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Summary

Introduction

: La finalità di questo saggio critico è quella di indagare sulla natura mista, postcoloniale, multiculturale e trasnazionale così come affiora nel romanzo Anil’s Ghost di Michael Ondaatje, con particolare attenzione alla protagonista Anil Tissera. Anil Tissera, the protagonist in Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, was born in Sri Lanka, moved to London and to the US.

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