Diaspora Writers Research Articles

CROSSING GENDER DIASPORA WRITING: A STUDY OF ANITA RAU BADAMI’S FICTIONAL WORLD

In the era of globalization, migration has become inevitable for progress and sustenance. The writers of diaspora enable a reader to peep into the culture of both –the hostland and the homeland. The theory of Intersectionality has been propounded by Kimberlé Crenshaw. Intersectionality emphasises on the dynamics of black and coloured women that have often been overlooked in feminist movements and theory. Much like Crenshaw, Collins argues that cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society, such as race, gender, class, and ethnicity.Theories of Intersectionality can be used to explore and understand how different forms of social inequality overlap and interact with each other to create multifaceted minority identities within social groups. It is a concept that is astonishingly relevant in the world in which we live today, with politics and discourses on race, class, sexuality, to name a few, being hugely enhanced and nuanced by the incorporation of an emphasis on intersectional thinking. Indian society as a conglomeration of cultures, communities with diverse ethnicities, religions, ideologies, castes, sub-castes, languages, customs and traditions is an apotheosis of pulsating plurality.The paper focuses to validate the universal applicability of the feminist theory of Intersectionality, by contextualizing the Indian socio-cultural milieu within its framework in the selected novelsviz. Can You Hear the NightbirdCall,The Hero’s Walk and Tamarind Memwritten by Anita Rau Badami, an Indo-Canadian Diaspora writer. Anita Rau Badami portrays “disremembered subjects” (Foreman 316) like widows who remain alienated from the larger social space. In her portrayal of Chinna, the widowed aunt in Tamarind Mem , she presents an image of a woman who finds meaning in her life despite her social invisibility. Shantamma in The Hero’s Walk had suffered a stroke in her sleep, at the age of eighty-two. The protagonist Nirmala had led her life conditioned to follow the path of obedience and subservience.Sharanjeet Kaur in Can you Hear the Nightbird Call? longs to free herself from her family’s penury which had deprived her of a happy childhood, education and comforts in life.The study focuses on perspectives on Intersectionality in Indian society as well as Intersectionality as a heuristic, based on the constructivism inherent in the selected novels.

Edebiyata yansımalarıyla Ermeni Diasporasının kültürel kimliği

Bu çalışmanın amacı Ermeni Diasporasının edebî üretimleri üzerinden kültürel kimliklerinin nasıl aktarıldığını ortaya koymaktır. Antik dönemlerden bu yana kullanılagelen kavramlardan olan “diaspora” terimi, başlangıçta asıl Grek yerleşiminin dışında kalan bölgelerde yaşayanları ifade etmek için kullanılırken, zamanla anlam genişlemesine uğramıştır. Bu nedenle, çalışmamızda öncelikle kavram olarak “diaspora”nın geçmişte ve günümüzde ifade ettiği anlamlara kısaca değinilecektir. Bir diasporanın oluşması için gerekli koşulları hazırlayan etkenler, temel olarak göçle başlayan süreçlerde ortaya çıkan anavatan algısı ve kimlik sorunudur. Bu etkenler birbirine sıkı sıkıya bağlıdır ve bu ilişkinin sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan diaspora kimliği farklı kültürel pratiklerin oluşmasına neden olur. Bu kültürel pratiklerden biri de edebiyattır. Diaspora edebiyatının herhangi bir yerel edebiyattan farklı olduğu kesindir. Dolayısıyla diaspora oluşumunda etkili olan etkenlere değinmeden diasporaların edebî faaliyetlerini anlamak mümkün olmayacaktır. Bu nedenle makalede, diasporik yapılarda edebiyatın nasıl oluştuğuna değinilecek, daha sonra Ermeni Diaspora edebiyatının kültürel kimliği konusu irdelenecektir. Çalışmamızda, Ermeni nüfusunun etkin bir şekilde faaliyet gösterdiği Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nden William Saroyan’ın öyküleri, yine Ermeni diasporasının etkin olduğu Fransa’dan Şahan Şahnur’un ilk romanı Şarkısız Ricat ve farklı bir diasporik yapı olan İran Ermenilerinden Zoya Pirzad’ın Işıkları Ben Söndürürüm adlı eseri incelenecektir. Bu eserlerin diaspora kültürel yaşantısını doğrudan yansıtması söz konusu olduğu için, çalışmamızda edebiyat sosyolojisi kuram ve yöntemlerinden yararlanılacaktır. Ayrıca, İran Ermenilerinin yapısı ve tarihsel arka planındaki farklılıklardan dolayı diğer diasporik unsurlardan ayrıldığı noktalar göz önünde bulundurularak karşılaştırmalı edebiyat bilimi kuram ve yöntemlerine de başvurulacaktır.

Women in Wartime: Venu Chitale’s National Imaginaries as Radio Resistance on the BBC

In 1940, the Maharashtrian-born writer Venu Chitale was among the first Indian women recruited by the BBC to broadcast war propaganda programs designed to persuade British and Indian listeners to support Britain’s antifascist efforts. Given that India’s anticolonial nationalists and intelligentsia were ambivalent about supporting their colonizers in a war many felt was not theirs to fight, the BBC enlisted a group of Indian diaspora writers—whose voices listeners in India would find familiar, trustworthy, and persuasive—to present British people and culture in a positive light. This essay examines how Venu Chitale navigated her competing allegiances to Britain’s antifascist activities and India’s anticolonial nationalism when broadcasting pro-British war propaganda programs on the BBC’s Home and Eastern Services. By reading Chitale’s broadcasts through the context of Britain’s vegetarianism and animal welfare movement and her 1950 novel In Transit—which presents the nationalism of Maharashtra’s Chitpawan Brahmin community—I illuminate how Chitale integrates subversive commentary that challenges disempowering colonial stereotypes and misperceptions of Indians into her broadcasts lauding British contributions to the war effort. The immediacy and intimacy of Chitale’s broadcasts into the private homes of her listeners enabled her to position Indian women more inclusively within the national imaginaries of Britain and India. Although Chitale’s strategic performances of authentic solidarity may not appear overtly anticolonial, I contend that her refusal to erase her diasporic identity markers by Anglicizing her speech, dress, or personal values when presenting her programs forces listeners to acknowledge that her allegiance with their cause makes her a citizen equal to themselves and defines her identity as much as her embodied difference. The subversive nature of Chitale’s messaging marks the first stages of a South Asian resistance to anti-immigrant racism that would become increasingly robust in the decades following decolonization.

Altering Time, Altering States: Contemplative Geopolitics in the South Asian Anglophone Novel

A high orientalist text, but one that influences many postcolonial writers, Jorge Luis Borges’s story “The Garden of Forking Paths” imagines a Chinese garden-text that tracks all courses of actual and possible events, making all timelines, both real and virtual, seem equally present and deeply connected. Versions of this enhanced, multi-dimensional temporal awareness appear in the work of several Asian and Asian diaspora writers as they grapple with cataclysmic historical moments, from WWII to contemporary violent outbursts, and consider counter-narratives, ways events might have been otherwise. Using Haruki Murakami’s fiction as a departure point for examining South Asian diaspora fiction writers Michael Ondaatje, Amitav Ghosh, and Karan Mahajan, this paper explores factors that enable the presentation of enhanced time consciousness as linked to a mindfulness practice or that conversely predispose such apprehensions of deep temporal connectivity to become fleeting epiphanies, ones often tragically tied to global politics and globalizing technologies.

KHALED HOSSEINI’S A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS: INTERSECTIONS OF HISTORY, MEMORY AND CULTURE

Memory studies as an interdisciplinary approach uses memory as a tool for remembering the traumatic experiences. Khaled Hosseini’s text A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) narrates the events of the past by combining history, culture and politics in the South Asian context and it also explains about the gender and religion in particular the lives of women under Islamic regime. The novel is set in the historical era of Afghanistan during soviet invasion and until the Taliban occupation. The theme revolves around the struggles and challenges of the people at times of war and invasion. Through the protagonists’ Mariam and Lalia’s struggle against the patriarchal clutches, Khaled Hosseini symbolizes Afghan people’s desire for independence. Mariam and Lalia undergo cultural trauma, the former traumatizes due to the internal displacement and by the vigorous imposition of religious practices, and the latter suffers from trauma through the forceful external migration and also by the memories of homeland. Khaled Hosseini as a diaspora writer describes the ancient history and cultural practices of Afghanistan. This shows his individual and cultural memory towards his native land. The research argument takes into account the intersection of trauma and memory in the interpretation of the literary text as it represents the interrelated and complimentary fields of study since 1990s. Trauma is considered as the act of remembering, thus this paper tends to highlight the traumatic histories embedded in the culture of oppression.

Cultural loss, Political and Race Issues of Tamil Diaspora in Mathalai Somu’s Short stories

Diaspora Literature has played an important role in modern Tamil literature. It involves an idea of homeland, a place from where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys undertaken on account of economic compulsions. Basically, Diaspora is a minority community living in exile. On a global scale, Life of immigrants is largely fraught with problems and challenges. They have to face various difficulties in the countries where they emigrated. Their presence is precariously located in the face of racism. They have lost their own culture and language. Their existence is set among political problems. This article aims to record the Cultural loss, Political and Racical problems of Tamil Diaspora, through the Fictions of Matale Somu who is an International Tamil Diaspora writer living in Australia. He wrote Twenty-five books including five novels, five Short stories books, three Novellas and Research books. This article includes the definition of Diaspora and Culture. And Cultural loss, Political and Race Issues of Tamil Diaspora also discussed in this text.

REPRESENTATION OF IDENTITY CRISIS IN THE SELECTED WORKS OF JUMPA LAHIRI: A CRITICAL STUDY

Society plays a vital role in literature and in the personal lives of people. As literature is a mirror of society, we can mostly find historical, cultural, religious, social, political, and geographical representation of Human society of Different Communities and countries in literature. The way globalization can play a very important role in the life of the people, due to globalization most of the people wish to start their journey in the rural to urban Areas from broad to abroad countries, metro, and mega cities of the world. As human beings, we have always been in Adventure of a better life. The people are attracted towards Education, fashion, money, civilization, discipline and Well-mannered lifestyles. People move from one place to another for the betterment of Life while they leave their homeland and Shift into another Country for a Better future, but this Detachment from homeland creates identity Crisis, alienation, rootlessness, inner conflict due to Different cultures and dual identity in the life of migrants. These impacts of migration and modernization are also represented in the work of various contemporary Diaspora writers. Like Jumpa lahiri is one of admired Indian- American authors, Her work portrays migrant Experience and life This research is focused on the Diaspora writing and identity crisis in the select works of Jumpa Lahiri.

THE ENIGMATIC JOURNEY OF STUDENT DIASPORA: A STUDY OF THE EXPERIENCES OF ASHOKE, SUBHASH AND GAURI

In her two major novels The Namesake and The Lowland Jhumpa Lahiri, a seminal South Asian Diaspora writer, traces the journey of three students (Ashoke, Subhash and Gauri) in diaspora. Ashoke and Subhash migrate to America in order to accomplish their academic goals and to have a better life opportunity, and Gauri accompanies her second husband Subhash to America and decides to continue her education. The present research work will analyse both the novels The Namesake and The Lowland to assert this argument that the journey and struggle of Ashoke and Subhash as students in diaspora is different from that of Gauri i.e. the journey of a female student diaspora is far more complicated and arduous than that of a male student diaspora. Ashoke and Subhash migrate to America at their will and with the consent of their parents who somehow take pride in the fact that their children are studying in America while the migration of Gauri to America follows a different trajectory. She is able to migrate to America only after marrying Subhash and has to topple down many patriarchal structures to secure her academic career

The Cairo Trilogy from the Perspective of Orientalism

Before the 1980s, the meaning of Orientalism was single, that is only to carry out research in various fields related to Oriental civilization, and to excavate, narrate and write knowledge. Orientalism written by the Arab-American scholar Edward W. Said, is one of the representative works of colonial cultural theory that emerged after the 1990s. <i>The Cairo Trilogy</i> (<i>Palace Walk</i>, <i>Palace of Desire</i>, <i>Sugar Street</i>), written by Egyptian Realist writer Naguib Mahfouz in series, published in 1956 and 1957. The story which focused on national identity in the novel takes place in three old neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt, so this novel is also known as <i>The Cairo Trilogy</i>. Unlike other diaspora writers, Mahfouz did not have multiple nationalities and never left the land he grew up in, but was caught up in the tumultuous times of modern Egypt and experienced the violent clash of Eastern and Western ideologies and cultures. His Cairo Trilogy not only provides a visual representation of Islamic-Arab culture, but also conveys the attitudes and perceptions of the 'other' and his adherence to the local culture through his characters. Focus on the main idea from <i>The Cairo Trilogy,</i> this article will attempt to briefly explain the literary value and significance of the Cairo Trilogy from the perspective of Said's Orientalism.

ОБРАЗ ЖІНКИ-БОРЦЯ В ПОЕЗІЇ ОЛЕНИ ТЕЛІГИ

The original vision of the role of women in the struggle for national freedom is presented by the work of Olena Teliha, a Ukrainian diaspora writer. The work of the author is closely related to the Prague school - a community of artists who emigrated to Europe in the first half of the 20th century. The writers of this literary circle in their artistic and journalistic texts nurtured the ideas of nationalism and emphasized the need to form an effective Ukrainian, a man of rank, capable of defending and building an independent state. The lyrical and journalistic works of Olena Teliha also actualize these problems. The author believed that a woman's mission in the struggle for state sovereignty is to become a friend, and moral support for male warriors, and, if necessary, also to take up arms. The writer's artistic work has a feminist sound, but the author's views on the role and place of women in society are not entirely consistent with the ideas of the philosophy of feminism. The article focuses on the analysis of Olena Teliha's poems «To Men», «Answer», «Evening Song», «Evening», «I will not forgive the hand that beat me...», and «Everything awaits: both despair and resentment». The study of these works from the standpoint of feminist criticism proved that their lyrical heroine is a gentle and affectionate woman who is a life-giving force for a man-warrior, and defender of the state. At the same time, she is a morally strong and strong-willed person, capable of taking up arms at critical times and courageously defending her land on par with her husband. The woman in the author's poetry is ready to forgive her chosen one and the world everything, except the humiliation of her human dignity. The harmony of the world in her lyrics is based on the idea of parity in the relationship between men and women. Olena Teliha's lyrical works testify that the author was a national-centric feminist. A woman, in the author's understanding, must remain gentle with her husband, and devoted to him, and when the latter has a mission to protect his state, she must become a friend and ally in the struggle.

LITERARY REPRESENTATION OF FEAR IN EVERYDAY LIFE DISCOURSE OF 1930S SOVIET UKRAINE (OLENA |ZVYCHAINA’S NOVEL «FEAR»)

The article is devoted to fiction representation’s research influence of the fear’s, as part of the totalitarianism everyday practices 1930’s, on the creation «homo sovieticus» identity. The everyday history studies are important component of the memory and identity studies. The Ukrainian memory studies pay attention on the traumatic historical experience, while the west European scholars are fixed on the socio-cultural history of the everyday life. The benefit of this study is combine both research approaches. This provides an opportunity to explore social totalitarian everyday life from the view of the reconstruction outlook and identity of the «homo sovieticus». We used discourse-analysis’s methodology for this research, thethought about that our communication is reflection of our identity and the nature of social relations. As applied materials wechosen diaspora writers’ texts, the novel «The Fear» by Olena Zvychayna and memories by Dokiya Humenna and ValerianRevuc’ky. All these authors were witnessed Stalin’s repressions, and later they wrote about it. Olena Zvychayna described the fear as terrors’ instrument, which defined soviet peoples’ everyday life. For example, the practices of the night arrests. The thousands of people across the country were arrested between the first and third hours every night. Those systematic practices of intimidation became the part of the whole physical terror in 1930’. As a result, we can see «a faceless person» in fiction about that period. His main characteristics are depersonalization of personality, and unification of appearance according with sovieticus aesthetic. In contrast, fear is personified and has a face. Its connected with certain persons in collective imaginations of the soviet people, for example Stalin or Yezov, and otherі, who represented the totalitarianism system punitive practiceses of the system. The practice of collective meeting was another element Stalin’s intimidation tactic in the 1930’. The collective meetings were devoted to stigmatization particular persons with nonsovieticus outlook. As a consequence, it formation еру collective intimidation system. The aesthetics of pessimism and physical fall arosed in the everyday life of people in fear and was opposed to canons’ beauty and optimism tj socialist realism. Everyday life’s realistic showed many contrasts between normative aesthetic with the cult of the beautiful human body, optimistic socialism’s labor and gloomy totalitarian aesthetic. We can see some main oppositions in the novel «The Fear», such as: monumental forms collective life and man loneliness; mass Soviet celebrations and uncolored everyday life; party meeting with bravura marches and forbidden wedding in the church. At same time, the totalitarian reality’s aesthetic influenced on the personality’s moral degradation and value system of the person. As a result, it transformed soviet people in victim and executioner in one person. In conclusion we remark that the fears’ phenomenon was determinative in shaping «soviet man» Stalinist’s period. The systematic practices of intimidation formed the man depersonalized, identified with mass. Another definition such people – «faceless person». He or she needs appropriate aesthetic, which contrast with of the canon’s soviet realism aesthetic. The fear to stand out lays in the such Stalin’s system base.

The Anxiety of Alienation: Observing ‘Trauma’ and ‘Exile Blues’ of Indian Diaspora in Select Poems of Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali is one of the most celebrated modern poets of Indian diaspora whose poetry echoes the sense of trauma, loss of ‘home’ and identity and deals with major concerns of dislocation, fragmentation from ancestry, nostalgia, and rootlessness. The sense of alienation is more evident in the works of diaspora writers who are constantly caught up between the cultural spaces of the ‘host’ land and creating a hyphenated identity. The diasporic self finds comfort only in memory rather than the existing contemporary realities hurtful to the ‘exiled’ individual and find themselves possessing a fueling desire to go back to their homeland. Trauma is a response of a distressing event that affects an individual’s ability to cope with life situations and triggers certain traumatic markers. The ‘trauma’ of exile is a psychological phenomenon while the geographical dislocation is more of a physical one. The paper is an attempt to observe the trauma question and exilic state of the diasporic subject in Ali’s poetry and their attempt to live in the ‘host’ land through disintegration from the familiarity of the ‘native’ homeland. The paper seeks to observe how Ali’s poetry is charged with his multicultural hyphenated identity- rendering him a nameless entity. His separation from nativity and ancestral roots showcases the anguish, dilemma triggered in the immigrant in varying degrees and progression of trauma in three select poems- “Postcard from Kashmir”, “Snowmen” and “Cracked Portraits”.

Self-Exile as a Writing Strategy in the Novels by W.G. Sebald and A.A. Makušinskij

In modern literary criticism, the concept and so-called genre ‘migration literature’ is commonly associated with the experience of exile, often for political reasons; by contrast, writers who have left their country for reasons other than political are labelled as ‘migrant-writers’, ‘writers abroad’, or ‘diaspora writers’. The use of such a different terminology to categorise authors and their writings highlight the fact that there are some distinctive characteristics distinguishing them.&#x0D; While I do share this perspective to a certain degree, I also would like to draw attention to a major literary trend of the last two decades: the appearance of writers who expatriate voluntarily without being persecuting politically but yet are in a situation which I define as ‘self-exile’ or ‘voluntary exile’. Despite their different languages and countries of origin and residence, an analysis of their texts demonstrates that these authors are united by two common features: 1) a reflection on the tragic past of their compatriots, who have experienced forced mass emigration, and an attempt to find echoes of this experience in everyday life; and 2) an awareness of their own position (that is, the situation of self-exile) as a productive process and creative basis for their writing work. &#x0D; The hypothesis I suggest in this paper is that the texts written by ‘writers who are in self-exile’ are characterised by certain writing strategies and themes typical of migrant writers yet they also have some unique features, which are related to the voluntary experience of leaving their home country. Home is to be understood broadly, not in terms of a certain geopolitical location, but as belonging to one single culture, community, and language. The aim of this article is to examine these very features.&#x0D; This article focuses on the novels by two famous contemporary authors: Aleksej Makušinskij (Russia/Germany) and Winfried Sebald (Germany/United Kingdom). In their works, the representation of the condition of self-exile has led the authors to develop a multilingual discourse and recreate the new transitory literary world.

FROM TRANSGRESSION TO TRANSFORMATION OF DIASPORA IDENTITY IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S THE LOWLAND

Migration is not a recent phenomenon; it has been a part of human history since time immemorial. However, with the coming of globalization by the late 1960s, the migration of people across the world has abruptly increased. Many of the educated youths and unskilled laborers due to various social, political, and economic reasons migrate from their native countries to another country. Migration not only changes the immediate physical environment but also the social and cultural environment which has a colossal impact on the identity of an individual. The interface with the new culture calls for a cultural shift that not only alters the identity of an individual but also changes the way one perceives the self. Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Lowland set amidst the Maoist rebellion of Calcutta in the 1960s also highlights the issues of migration, displacement, and the consequent formation of diaspora identity. The experience of living as a migrant either temporarily or permanently in another country has facilitated diaspora writers like Jhumpa Lahiri to recognize and uncomplicated the notion of diaspora identity. Her novel The Lowland (2003) meticulously expresses the changing identity of the migrants. Thus, in this paper, an attempt has been made to understand the evolving nature of diaspora identity through the metaphors of transgression and transformation.

Cultural conflicts in select Diaspora Novels: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss &amp; Jumpha Lahiri’s The Namesake

People are identified by their culture basically. When we know the new culture it will enrich our knowledge but adopting the same and living in an alien land will affect our freedom of thought and life. Folks move from one place to another for all kind of betterment. Change of whereabouts and language from one to other drag the people to a further complicated world. They drop all their hopes towards the newness and try to adjust or struggle for their life in the unexpected circumstances. Man Booker Prize winner, a famous Indian Diaspora writer, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss discusses different kind of losses take place by man’s displacement. The characters Biju, Sai and Bela represent the pain and affliction of departers. They are longing for identity and want to create a comfort zone in the alien soil leads them frustrated. Jumpha Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize winner, put across the same expatriate sensibility in her novel The Namesake. The protagonist Gogol and others Ashoke, Ashima migrate to another country still wants to follow their culture and traditional values there. These novels traced the concept of cultural identity with rootlessness and ancestral expectation. The present paper deals with identity predicament in the basis of cultural conflict through the characters’ strife of unfamiliar terrain.

Жанрово-стильова та тематична специфіка прози Олекси Гай-Головка

The article analyzes the genre and style features of the artistic practice of the Ukrainian diaspora writer Oleksa Hai-Holovko (1910–2006), who lived in Canada. In the process of the analysis it was found that in his literary practice the writer used the main stylistic features of genre and thematic varieties of works following the principles of image, image system, plot and plot construction, composition, construction of space and time. The notion of genre and style is defined, the typological features of traditional prose in the context of the writer 's work are analyzed. It is proved that the genre is classified as a formal unit that expresses a certain meaning, based on specific criteria: issues, themes of prose, the author's position, trend, pathos, conflict of work, ideology, plot-compositional features, narrative form.

Demystifying Magical Realism: A Close Reading of Quichotte

Magical Realism is a genre that brings in together two completely different dimensions of study, namely realism and fantastic imagination (magic). There is always an air of eerie complexity around the genre due to the confluence of such contradictions. Salman Rushdie is one of the most important Indian Diaspora writers prominently known for the triumphant utilization of this genre through innovative techniques in his work. Some of his most famous literary productions of this genre are The Midnight’s children, Shame, etc., This present paper takes Rushdie’s (2019) recent blockbuster publication Quichotte under study, and scrutinizes it from a hermeneutical point of view. It uses the principles theorized by W. B. Frais (2004) in her book Ordinary Enchantments and attempts to analyse the book under the derived perspective. This brief analysis underscores the hidden elements that are unanimously typical of all Magical Realist texts with reference to Quichottein and endeavours to demystify it.

The Archive Is Also a Place of Dreams: On Creolization as Method

This piece engages creolization as an approach to the history of philosophy and the sense of justice. Building on ancient philosophical and anthropological accounts of the institutional rituals as well as creolizing analyses by writers of the Black Diaspora, it focuses on the approach outlined by J. A. Gordon’s pathbreaking political theory. Creolization is advanced as an invitation to intensify possibilities lying dormant in the archive of our collective histories and lived experiences. An imaginary or even visual site, first, and only then as a concept, or a discursive practice.

Of exile and artists

The aim of this paper is to record and define the relationship between the ‘artist’ and the theme of ‘exile’ which constantly fascinated the literary writers and critics across the globe over the years. As creative artists and critics many of the twentieth and twenty-first century novelists - to name a few, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Jhumpa Lahiri and so on. - have been preoccupied with the idea of ‘exile’ and alienation of ‘self’ which places them in the category of post-colonial diaspora writers. Examining the emotional intensity of an exiled individual most of these literary writers of the era have themselves been either nomads or globe-trotters connecting themselves to the vital nerve-center of contemporary mainstream life. The tragic sense of uprootedness of an individual’s existence who is everywhere and still ‘nowhere’ on this globe gathers substance from the alienated self that is theirs sometimes crying, other times searching for a true or real home in their writings.

Remembering the Lebanese Wars in Abbas El Zein’s Leave to Remain (2009)

Soon after the Civil War’s end in 1990, the state in Lebanon has engaged in a discourse of amnesia, in a bid to proscribe any heed to the question of the war. The purpose is to conceal this dark chapter of the Lebanese history through the repression of memory. Through different practices of remembering, diaspora writers have tried, however, to offer alternative narratives of the Lebanese history. In so doing, they engage in resisting the official dominant ideologies through producing what Micheal Foucault would label as “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 81). In studying Abbas El Zein’s memoir Leave to Remain, the article sets out to explore how and in what ways post-war Lebanese Diaspora literature can be categorized as a form of history writing about war. This article focuses the Civil War (1975-1990) and the July War in 2006.