Fragmented subjectivity representation of women in the selected novels of Bapsi Sidhwa and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Abstract

This research is undertaken to analyse the selected novels newlineof Bapsi Sidhwa and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni within the framework of the newlinediscourses on subjectivity. Subjectivity refers to one s concept of one s own self. In newlineWestern philosophy, encapsulated in Descartes I think, therefore I am , the conscious newlinemind has been considered as the essence of selfhood. But Jacques Lacan, pursuing the newlineFreudian unconscious to its logical conclusion, announced that the unconscious is the newline kernel of our being and it is structured like language. Since language exists as a newlinestructure before the individual enters into it, the self is merely a linguistic effect, not an newlineessential unity. Louis Althusser applied Lacanian psychoanalysis to the Marxist newlineconcept of ideology for his theory of interpellation . He said that individuals are formed as subjects by being interpelleted or hailed by the dominant ideology so newlinethat they can be subjected to it. An individual s subjectivity is fragmented by the newlinevarious ideological interpellations s/he is subjected to. Michel Foucault carried the newlinetheory of subject formation further by describing the subject as a product of the newlinediscourses. Since discourses are produced by the combination of power and knowledge newlinethe subject is formed by these discourses so that s/he accepts the reigning discourse of newlinethe state without protest. The Lacanian, Althusserian and Foucaultian postulate of newlinesubjectivity as being essentially unstable is stretched by feminist theorists as being newlinefragmented in case of women by prevailing concepts of gender and other categories newlinelike race, class and sexuality. newline