Imaging the Diasporic Self: A Critical Estimate of Jhumpa Lahiri's Short Fiction, with Specific Reference to Unaccustomed Earth Singhvi Rimika Associate Professor, Department of English, The IIS University, Jaipur-4, Rajasthan, India Email id: rimikasinghvi@gmail.com Online published on 21 April, 2018. Abstract The paper proposes to make an assessment of Jhumpa Lahiri's short fiction by examining how the emergence of a displaced self is linked to social influences that are increasingly global in their implications and consequences. The questions that are raised include whether Lahiri sees the self as frail and fractured, and whether it is a cause for concern or celebration. It is further argued whether the self is fragmented just as the traditional forms of social integration in the present times are. An attempt is made to assess the influence, in her stories, of conventional identity markers or categories, received social meanings or given values, social norms and practices, institutionalised systems or ordered structures and established hierarchies, even as their grip has dramatically loosened in this day and age of light mobility, liquid experiences and dispersed commitments. The paper thus aims to show as to how all this may have resulted in the creation of a flexible selfhood that has also come to mean, in Lahiri's case, rebellion, disaffection, discontinuity and difference. In other words, the idea is to bring forth the challenges posed to the self. The manner in which the writer aestheticises the diasporic experience has also been examined to address the issue of the deconstructions and reconstructions of the self by social structures on the one hand, and the authenticity and creativity of the self on the other. The paper eventually discovers how the writer's concept of the self informs and helps constitute subjective forms of resistance and existence. Top Keywords Diaspora, Dislocation, Displacement, Exile, Hybridity. Top |