The dialogics of cultural encounter: a study of women’s diasporic identity in the selected works of Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri

Abstract

This doctoral thesis captures the cross-cultural experiences of dislocated women and the possible condition of belonging simultaneously psychologically and experientially – in the maze of cultural plurality. But what makes this dissertation unique is its analysis through Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of ‘dialogism’. By utilizing Bakhtin’s concept, the present research project aims to study women’s intercultural positionality in the immediate and current scenario of post modern situations in the selected works of Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri; and provides an overview of the changing cultural norms and altering controversies of women’s identity. The issues of identity and cultural clashes have already been vastly explored. Therefore, the present approach extends the scope of debate on identity to encompass the larger dimension of dialogue between cultures. Appropriating Bakhtin’s idea of dialogism, as a term capable of non-categorization, it has been used in the present project with reference to cultural encounter. The purpose of this research work is to acquaint the reader with key concepts of Bakhtin such as – dialogism, heteroglossia, polyphony and carnivalesque, and to specify the implications of these notions in the cross-cultural scenario. Issues regarding cultural encounter, identity formation, difference and assimilation, not only form a part of diasporic literature and postcolonial studies, but they implicate postmodernist approach as well.