Narratives of nation in the age of diaspora

Swati Chanda, Purdue University

Abstract

This study examines nationhood and identity in the cultural production of contemporary postcolonial writers and artists in the United States and Britain, the two main centers of English-speaking immigrants. I investigate diaspora politics of South Asians and Anglophone Caribbeans ranging from "international" writers like Salman Rushdie and Jamaica Kincaid, to the little-known expatriate filmmaker Gurinder Chadha and dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. These artists problematize closed definitions of nationalism by foregrounding their neocolonial and metropolitan identifications. The dynamic energy of diasporic movements thus redefines the postcolonial "homeland" and western metropolitan nation. By examining how magic realism novels, dub, postmodern feminist narratives and film refract political questions of identity, I explore the trajectories of diasporic nation and diaspora aesthetics. Some of the basic issues that inform this project include empowerment in diasporic hybridity, possibilities for alliances between various immigrant groups, representation of immigrant agendas in political and literary activity, and finally, the continued narrativizations of nation in expatriate theory. A sustained interest in advocating and problematizing strategies of empowerment is at the heart of this dissertation.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Rowe, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Comparative literature|British and Irish literature|American literature|Caribbean literature

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