Forging Transnational Identities: A Postethnic Diasporic Re-imaging of “Home” in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

Abstract

Benedict Anderson‟s definition of nation as “an imagined political community” (6) is important in the context of the portrayal of home by diasporic writers. “Home,” when re-calling or re-imaging the quest for belonging from the point of view of the diaspora, is often portrayed as an elusive metaphoric vision that is in resonance with the struggle against the attempt to pin the term down to physical dimensions. This paper explores the concept of “home” in terms of its changing connotations in the diasporic writing of Asian American author Jhumpa Lahiri. Lahiri‟s 2003 novel, The Namesake, portrays the diasporic conflict between an essentialist Indian identity and assimilating into America‟s multicultural ethos. This conflict is more pronounced in the case of the female characters, portrayed through attempts at juxtaposing traditional expectations and complete assimilation. Home becomes a “presence in absence” for the female characters in Lahiri‟s novel, challenging the idea of an identity based on the nation as a fixed, geographical entity, and the culinary becomes the site for cultural negotiation. This paper seeks to delineate how conflicting identities make Vijay Mishra‟s concept of the diasporic “impossible mourning” (9) a ground to forge a new identity based on the concept of a postethnic transnational diasporic space.