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| Reference : Mapping Out the ‘Time Zones’ of Diaspora in Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters |
| Parts of books : Contribution to collective works | |||
| Arts & humanities : Literature | |||
| http://hdl.handle.net/2268/34550 | |||
| Mapping Out the ‘Time Zones’ of Diaspora in Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters | |
| English | |
Munos, Delphine  [Université de Liège - ULg > Département des langues et littératures modernes > Littérature anglaise moderne et littérature américaine >] | |
| Feb-2012 | |
| Border-Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial Literatures and Media | |
| Makokha, J. K. S. | |
| Wawrzinek, Jennifer | |
| West-Pavlov, Russell | |
| Winter | |
| 133-141 | |
| 3825358992 | |
| Heidelberg | |
| Germany | |
| [en] Bharati Mukherjee ; India ; Indian Literature ; Diaspora | |
| [en] Although Bharati Mukherjee is famous, or rather infamous, for her shameless embrace of America and its melting-pot ideology, in Desirable Daughters India, the homeland, is unexpectedly made to re-enter the stage of immigrant identity construction. In many respects it would seem that it has now become untenable to represent immigrant identity in terms of a one-directional movement from “India” to “America.”
In Desirable Daughters the rise of India, the accelerated time/space compression of late capitalism, the post-90s paradigm shift in matters of transnational migration, the emphasis on return migrations and the emergence of a new global interaction indeed dramatically outflank Mukherjee’s previous narrative of American “exceptionalism” – which suddenly seems dated by comparison. By portraying the complex transnational network of connections operating between RIs (Resident Indians) and NRIs (Non Resident Indians), Mukherjee’s book gestures towards the “de-spatialization” of immigrant identity construction and its consequent “re-metaphorization” in terms of “time zones.” What is more, the increasingly compelling influence of contemporary India on the Indo-American diasporic subjectivity marks a “back to the future” return of the repressed which temporally repositions migrant identity between a ghostly time of repetition and a “hauntology” of new becomings. What Mukherjee suggests, I will contend, is that immigrant agency and self-fashioning cannot be associated anymore with the “pioneering spirit” of forward-looking characters that discard their “Indianness” upon (geographical) entry into the West. In my reading of Desirable Daughters the protagonist’s zigzagging path to self-transformation will be emphasized, so that it will become apparent that time has become the fourth space through which new spaces for diasporic identity can be renegotiated. | |
| CEREP (Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherche en Etudes Postcoloniales) | |
| Researchers ; Students | |
| http://hdl.handle.net/2268/34550 |
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