1

Conceptualization of the Diaspora Identity Formulation: From

Literary Theory and Cultural Perspective

Hussain Ahmed Liton

Department of Foreign Languages, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia
E-mail: [email protected]/[email protected]
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0958-2732

Abstract
This paper strives to traverse the aspects related to the maze of conceptualization of diaspora
identity formulation from a literary theory and cultural perspective referring to Bharati
Mukherjee’s diasporic writings. To this end, this paper discusses the issues of the diaspora,
diasporic literary tenets, and diaspora identity based on primary and secondary sources. It
also employs Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, S. Hall’s diaspora and cultural identity,
and other noted diasporic and cultural theorists’ contributions as a method for the research
analysis and theoretical foundation of the study. The research analysis shows that to
configure diaspora identity, the diasporic community does not depend on fixed boundaries or
identities because they develop their own fluid/split identities based on their different
situations of life in the New World of multicultural ambience, as Jasmine’s different identities
in different situations and locations are reflected in Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine (1989). This
paper also contributes significantly to diasporic transcultural studies and literary criticism in
particular.

Keywords: diaspora, cultural dilemma, displacement, assimilation, transformation,

Homeland vs. Host land cultures

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Introduction and Background

Diaspora writing in English is a comparatively new addition to world literature. The writers
of the Indian Diaspora, through their literary musings, have greatly complemented the
Diasporic English literature. The diasporic literature captures the alienation, loneliness,
homelessness, displacement, existential rootlessness, cultural in-betweenness, nostalgia,
 2

protest, assertions, and the quest for identity. It also addresses issues related to the
amalgamation or disintegration of cultures. According to Enwezor, “(T)he diasporic space
[is] the quintessential late 20th-century space, a space in which the terms of modern
immigration, exile, loss, nation, subject, and citizen are negotiated and reinvented for various
uses” (Enwezor, 1997, p. 88). Some contemporary Indian diasporic women writers make use
of literary space to highlight women’s issues and existential dilemmas through gendered
lenses in the transnational milieu. Among them, the Indian-American author Bharati
Mukherjee deserves special mention. Her literary oeuvre reflects immigrants’ experience,
especially women’s complications, cultural dislocations, paradigms of hybridity, cross-
pollination, identity crises, nostalgia, and agonies of migration on the land of immigrants and
paradoxes that are also analogously reflected in the works of other women writers of the
Indian Diaspora, namely, Anita Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Meera
Syal and Kiran Desai. Against this backdrop, this discourse attempts to explore ‘Diaspora
Women’s Identity and Cultural Hybridization’ in her novels, specifically, The Tiger’s
Daughter (1971), Wife (1975), Jasmine (1989), The Holder of the World (1993), Leave it to
Me (1997) and Desirable Daughters (2002). This paper in particular discusses the situations
that pave the way for the development of diasporic identity formulation from a critical
literary theory and cultural perspective.
Bharati Mukherjee, born to a Bengali Brahmin family in Calcutta, experienced an
alien culture at an early stage of her life due to her family’s three-year stay in London, when
she was approximately nine years old. After completing her post-graduation in English from
Calcutta University, India, she went to the United States to join the Creative Writing
Programme. Subsequently, she obtained her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature
from the University of Iowa, where she met Clark Blaise, the Canadian novelist, Professor
and Journalist and married him. Therefore, she had cross-cultural experience at home because
she had a mixed cultural marriage and a ‘unicultural’ parentage. The aim of this study is to
explore the trajectory of Mukherjee’s diasporic female characters’ search for identity and
transcultural hybridization, considering their sociocultural displacement, alienation,
‘otherness’, cross-cultural conflicts and gender discrimination. From the perspective of
literary, cultural, and gender issues as cultural phenomena, the present study investigates how
diaspora women’s identities are constructed through cultural hybridization and assimilation
under the influence of multicultural societies, particularly in selected novels. Bharati
Mukherjee herself, as an overseas student, experienced racism, alienation, and
transcontinental displacement, which were reflected in her writings. The author, portraying
 3

such a sociocultural background in her novels, discusses the trajectory of diasporic women’s
cultural identities, which is the pivotal focus of the argument of this study. What makes this
study unique is its analysis through the lens of Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of ‘hybridity’ and
Stuart Hall’s ‘Diaspora and cultural Identity’.

Literature Review
This part of this paper focuses on the literature and contributions of others related to the
issues of the diaspora, migration and the terrain of diaspora identity in particular.

The Diaspora Concept

In today’s mediatized global village, diaspora study has become an emerging academic field
of discourse. The term diaspora finds its roots in the Greek language and is based on a
translation of the Hebrew word, Galut. It was originally derived from a Greek noun meaning
“the scattered” or “the dispersed” people and at first referred to the dispersal of Jews from
their homeland (Wahlbeck, 2002, p. 229). In ancient Greece, the word refers to migration and
colonization. In Hebrew, “the term initially referred to the setting of colonies of Jews outside
Palestine after the Babylonian exile and has assumed a more general connotation of people
settled away from their ancestral homelands” (Shuval, 2003). Today, in most scholarly
discussions, “diaspora” and “diaspora community” are addressed “...as metaphoric
designations for several categories of people— expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien
residents, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities tout court—in much the same way
that “ghetto” has come to designate all kinds of crowded...” (Safran, 1991, pp. 83). Tololyan,
in his editorial preface to the first issue of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies,
states that the term ‘diaspora’ “...includes the words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee,
guest-worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community” (Tololyan, 1991, p.
4). This term is used in various fields, such as anthropology, sociology, cultural studies,
literary studies and ethnic studies.
The concept of the modern diaspora has been widely applied to theorizing human
mobility and dispersion within a variety of disciplines. It refers to a group of people who
migrated from their original homeland and settled in other countries/territories of the world
temporarily or permanently. ‘Diaspora’ now also refers to anybody living outside his or her
traditional homeland. The diasporic ‘scattering/dispersion’ is transformed into ‘gathering’
according to Homi Bhabha:
“Gathering of exiles and émigrés and refugees; gathering on the edge of ‘foreign’
cultures; gathering at the frontiers; gathering in the ghettoes or cafes of city centers
 4

…. Also the gathering of people in the diaspora: indentured, migrant …” (Bhabha,

1994, pp. 198-199).
The spread of Jews from about the exilic age differs sharply from the phenomenon
covered by the current use of the diaspora. In this regard, James Procter encapsulates that
“‘diaspora’ can appear both as naming a geographical phenomenon – the traversal of physical
terrain by an individual or a group – as well as a theoretical concept: a way of thinking or of
representing the world” (Procter, 2007, p. 151). In this regard, Stuart Hall essentially defines:
“The diaspora does not refer us to those scattered tribes whose identity can only be secured in
relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all cost return, even though it means
pushing other people into the sea. This is the old, imperializing, hegemonizing form of
“ethnicity”. We have seen the fate of the people of Palestine at the hands of this backwards
conception of diaspora (and the complicity of the West with it)” (Hall, 1994, p. 401).

Diasporas as ‘Expatriate Minority’

Safran considers Diasporas the people of the ‘expatriate minority’ who were dispersed from
their original homeland in search of a better life, better job, better education or
‘forced/voluntary exile’. In his essay ‘Diasporas in Modem Societies: Myths of Homeland
and Return’, Safran defines diasporas as “...expatriate minority communities whose members
share several of the following characteristics:

I. they, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific original “centre” to two
or more “peripheral,” or foreign, regions;
II. they retain a collective memory, vision, or myth about their original homeland—its
physical location, history, and achievements;
III. they believe that they are not—and perhaps cannot be—fully accepted by their host
society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it;
IV. they regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal home and as the place to
which they or their descendants would (or should) eventually return—when
conditions are appropriate;
V. they believe that they should collectively be committed to the maintenance or
restoration of their original homeland and to its safety and prosperity; and
VI. They continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or
another, and their ethno communal consciousness and solidarity are importantly
defined by the existence of such a relationship” (Safran, 1991, pp. 83-84).
 5

These criteria help us understand the crux of the diaspora and emphasize homeland-oriented
aspects of the diaspora and the nexus of diaspora citizens. This idea is very important to the
discourse of the present study, and this definition is widely accepted in the literature because
it identifies that a group of people away from their homeland can be categorized as diaspora.
Cohen expanded these criteria and included the purpose of dispersal from a homeland, which
is not considered in Safran’s (1991) definition. Cohen (1997) categorizes the diaspora
according to the purpose of dispersal from a homeland as follows: a labor diaspora, such as
Indians in Fiji; an imperial diaspora, such as British; a trade diaspora, such as Chinese; and a
cultural diaspora, such as Caribbean peoples in the United Kingdom. This classification helps
to clarify the diaspora discourse from its cultural and social dimensions along with situations
that led to diasporic formulations (Cohen, 1997). Furthermore, Bruneau (Bruneau, 1995)
categorizes three kinds of Diasporas: entrepreneurial Diasporas, such as Chinese or Lebanese;
religious diasporas, such as Jews; and political diasporas, such as Palestinians and Tibetans.
Safran (1991), Cohen (1997) and Bruneau (1995) consider the diaspora in terms of history,
typology with a view to defining diasporic people’s ongoing relationships and connectivity
with their homeland. On the other hand, Vertovec (2000) emphasizes consciousness in the
minds of diaspora members and explains the concept of the diaspora as a process. He studies
diasporas through their relationship both with their homeland and with the host country in
which they live. He defines the diaspora in terms of three categories: a social form, a type of
consciousness, and a mode of cultural production.
First, Vertovec (2000) describes the diaspora as a social form and suggests that the
diaspora refers to a process of shaping social relationships among diaspora members from the
same origins. This relationship includes members of the diaspora maintaining a collective
identity, fostering diasporic solidarity and maintaining close ties to the original homeland.
The second meaning is that of the diaspora as a consciousness reflecting the imaginary
coherence diaspora members develop to connect both to their homeland and to the host
country. Diasporas do so when they experience exclusion and discrimination in a host
country; on the other hand, this negative experience may stimulate transnational bonds
among diaspora members. In the third meaning of the diaspora, Vertovec describes the
diaspora as a mode of cultural production, particularly concerning young diaspora members
who may experience hybridization of culture, as “facets of culture and identity are often self-
consciously selected, syncretized and elaborated from more than one heritage” (Vertovec,
2000, p. 154).
 6

In the second and third meaning of the diaspora, Vertovec emphasizes the relationship
of the globally dispersed diaspora with their host country and their consciousness of their
imaginary homeland. The diaspora is emerging as a collective subject—an identified ethnic
group that constructs its identities through continuous connections with its homeland. This
point is important for scrutinizing the conceptualization of diaspora identity construction in
this paper.
Furthermore, Demmers (2007) defines the diaspora as “collectives of individuals who
identify themselves, and are identified by others as part of an imagined community that has
been dispersed (either forced or voluntary) from its original homeland to two or more host-
countries and that is committed to the maintenance or restoration of this homeland”
(Demmers, 2007, p. 9). In this definition, Demmers emphasizes the importance of
identification with the experience of dispersal and, in turn, diasporas as having a homeland
orientation. This definition also combines Safran (1991) and Vertovec’s (2000) explanations
of the concept of the diaspora: it includes both the norm of the original homeland, as Safran
(1991) emphasizes, and the commitment diaspora members could put in the relationship with
other members to maintain their connections with their homeland, as Vertovec (2000)
suggested. The definition of Demmers helps us conceptualize the term ‘Diaspora’, which is
important to the present research.

Diasporic Adaptation to Changes and Transformations

In the recent scholastic exploration of the global academy, “The theoretical innovations of
Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, James Clifford and
others have in recent years vitalized postcolonial and diaspora studies, challenging ways in
which we understand ‘culture’ and developing new ways of thinking beyond the confines of
the nation state. The notion of the diaspora in particular has been productive in its attention to
the real-life movement of people throughout the world, whether these migrations have been
through choice or compulsion. However, perhaps of even greater significance to postcolonial
theory has been the consideration of the epistemological implications of the term diaspora as
theory. Such studies see migrancy in terms of adaptation and construction – adaptation to
changes, dislocations and transformations, and the construction of new forms of knowledge
and ways of seeing the world” (SHACKLETON, 2008, p. ix).
In several recent extensions of the term ‘diaspora’, some immigrant groups “…have
been construed as diasporas because of their continued involvement in homeland politics….
In a further extension, the term has come to embrace labour migrants who maintain (to some
 7

degree) emotional and social ties with a homeland. Algerian, Bangladeshi, Filipino, Greek,
Haitian, Indian, Italian, Korean, Mexican, Pakistani, Puerto Rican, Polish, Salvadoran,
Turkish, Vietnamese and many other migrant populations have been conceptualized as
diasporas in this sense” (as cited in Brubaker, 2005, p. 2).
The above literature review focuses on the diaspora and diaspora community as
expatriates, dislocations, memories, nostalgia, and immigration, and it also highlights the
importance of the present study for diaspora identity construction.

Methodology

This article maintains a qualitative research method. The current paper employs the extensive
reading practices of Mukherjee’s novels collected from different bookstores. Other secondary
materials in PDF format have been collected from different online libraries, such as the Saudi
Digital Library, Library of Congress, and Internet Archive Library. In addition, some related
scholarly research articles published in international journals both in print and online have
been collected. This study employed literary and cultural theories, such as Stuart Hall’s
Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Homi K Bhabha’s Hybridity in the Location of Culture,
Edward Said’s Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and other cultural theorists for the
theoretical and analytical foundation of the research inquiry. Some books, such as Beena
Agarwal’s Women Writers and Indian Diaspora, Jaydeep Sarangi’s On the Alien Shore,
Nagendra Kumar’s The Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee: A Cultural Perspective, Said’s Culture
and Imperialism & Reflections on Exile, Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Joel Kuortti,
& Mittapalli Rajeshwar’s Indian Women’s Short Fiction, have also been explored.

Discussion & Analysis [[

Conceptualization of Diaspora Identity

Bharat Mukherjee, in her seminal work, implicates the essentials of a diaspora individual in a
country where immigrants must maintain an identity: “She is here (America) to maintain an
identity, not to transform it” (Mukherjee, 2007). At this point, formulating a diaspora identity
is a significant issue.

Homeland or Host Country Orientated

There is a strong debate on whether the notion of a homeland or host country is central to
diaspora identity formulation in the field of diaspora studies. According to some scholars,
diasporic people have endless links with their homeland. Separation from their homeland
 8

intensifies their love and attention towards their homeland, and their identities are fashioned
on the basis of their strong notion of homeland connectivity. On the other hand, scholars such
as Brah, 1996; Hall, 1997; Kalra, Kaur, & Hutnyk, 2005; Tsagarousianou, 2004, do not reject
the connectedness and feelings of the diaspora towards their original homeland, but they
argue that the concept of the homeland does not reflect the current realities of Diasporas.
They point out that diaspora communities attempt to adapt themselves in the context of host
countries and that their notion of a homeland is only formed in static and nostalgic forms.
These are discussed in detail below:
The scholars who believe that the perception of the homeland is the centre of diaspora
identity formation articulate that the experience of migrancy can strengthen the feeling of loss
and reclaim connection to the homeland and, in turn, that the diaspora identity is formed as
the homeland is oriented. Earlier discussions strongly emphasized this criterion. Four of the
six criteria specified by Safran (1991), for example, concern the orientation to a homeland.
These include, first, maintaining a collective memory or myth about the homeland; second,
‘regarding the ancestral homeland as the true, ideal home and as the place to which one
would (or should) eventually return’; third, being collectively ‘committed to the maintenance
or restoration of the homeland and to its safety and prosperity’; and fourth, ‘continu[ing] to
relate, personally or vicariously’ to the homeland, in a way that significantly shapes one’s
identity and solidarity (Safran, 1991, pp. 83-84). Moreover, according to Cohen (1997), the
link between the homeland and diaspora is imbued with a consciousness of the homeland.
The consciousness is reflected in the passion diaspora members have for their actual ancestral
land/territory for searching their roots and history and is buried deep in their language,
religion, custom or folklore, and they try to maintain this consciousness while living outside
of the homeland (Cohen, 1997). Additionally, Skrbis (1999) opines that the homeland can be
‘real’ or ‘imagined’; the homeland is not necessarily a geographical territory but a homeland
myth. The homeland does not necessarily need to be a defined entity; rather, it can be
“constructed and imagined typos”, which have the power to evoke feelings of longing and
nostalgia to induce memories of the past and strong emotions among members of a diaspora
(Skrbis, 1999, p. 39).
Additionally, many migrants feel close to diaspora communities, which enables them
to lessen the sadness of being displaced and homelessness. According to some scholars, the
notion of a homeland is one of the basic components of a collective diaspora identity (Butler,
2001). Some diaspora persons are motivated to maintain connections with the homeland so
 9

that they can strengthen family relationships between those who live in the diaspora and the
homeland and engage in homeland politics (Schulz & Hammer, 2003).
In contrast to some scholars such as Hall, 1997; Tsagarousianou, 2004 & Bhabha, 1994, the
conceptual homeland is no longer the centre of diaspora identity production. They claim that
the formation of diaspora identity is more determined by how diaspora people incorporate
themselves into host countries rather than by their sense of longing for the original homeland.
The migrants’ arrival in “the ‘New World’... is therefore itself the beginning of diaspora, of
diversity, of hybridity and difference, what makes Afro-Caribbean people already people of a
diaspora” (Hall, 1990, p. 235). Hall (1997) argues that the diaspora “does not refer us to those
scattered tribes whose identity can only be secure in relation to some sacred homeland to
which they must at all costs return; the diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined not
by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a
conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity1.
Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves
anew, through transformation and difference” (Hall, 1990, p. 235). Therefore, Hall (1997)
believes that for diaspora members who live in different social, political, and cultural
environments of a host country, it is quite difficult, even impossible, to adhere to their
traditional culture without rejecting conformity to the mainstream dominant culture, and they
must experience a transformation in their life as new settlers and must recognize that they can
never truly go home and that their identity, which is assumed to be stable, will be hybridized
with the mainstream culture of the host country. Here, Hall’s idea of diasporic identity
formulation is relevant to the current research inquiry. It is also very relevant and striking to
cite here a few words from Bhabha that the identity of diasporic individuals in the present
world is appreciated by
“moving away from the singularities of 'class' or 'gender' as primary conceptual and or
ganizationalcategories, has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions - of race,
gender, generation,
institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual orientation - that inhabit any claim
to identity in the modern world” (Bhabha, 1994, p.2).

Formulation of Identity through Cultural Differences and Hybridity

1
Means racial or cultural mixing, but not in the sense of birth and procreation. It is in Hall’s voice “precisely the
mixes of colour, pigmentation, physiognomic type; the ‘blends’ of tastes.... the aesthetics of the ‘crossovers’, of
‘cut-and mix’.
 10

Identity is not by his/her connection to his/her previous ethnic morals and cultural traditions.
Tsagarousianou specifies that the homeland is no longer solely focused on the original
homeland; instead, it is shifted to focus on the process of integrating diaspora members into
the host country (Tsagarousianou, 2004). Edward Said suggested that

“Expatriation/exile for the intellectual is restlessness, movement, constantly being

unsettled and unsettling others. You cannot return to some earlier and perhaps more
stable condition of being at home; and, alas, you can never fully arrive, be at one with
your new home or situation” (Said, 1994, p. 365).

According to Edward Said (1994), Hall (1997), and Tsagarousianou (2004), diasporic citizens
share a sense of belonging to their original homeland in their minds in the form of nostalgia
and experience critical changes during the process of integration into the dominant culture of
the host country. Importantly, during the process of integrating into the mainstream culture of
the host country, diasporic citizens experience cultural assimilation and hybridity. It is
important to cite in this regard that

“Migration always implies change: and change involves the risk of losing one’s
identity. While the migrant does not recognize him/herself in his/her new image, the
people around him/her do not accept his/her otherness. Therefore, s/he is compelled to
face everyday life through a continuous oscillation between reality and dreams”
(Dwivedi, 2012).
The diasporic community looks back to their common historical experiences, cultures,
traditions, and social norms from the homeland, and they share the things on which they
develop their identity as “one people, with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of
reference and meaning” (Hall, 1990, p. 223). These stabilized and fixed identities are
challenged when migrants migrate to a new country where they encounter other cultures and
social norms and forms. Consequently, they experience a sense of loss and displacement.
Ainslie (2001) expresses the feeling of loss and displacement as follows:
“When an immigrant leaves loved ones at home, he or she also leaves the cultural
enclosures that have organized and sustained experience. The immigrant
simultaneously must come to terms with the loss of family and friends... It is not only
the people who are mourned but also the culture itself, which is inseparable from the
loved ones whom it holds” (Ainslie, 2001, p. 287).

It is apparent that by showing ‘traditional and cultural differences’ through daily life
activities, diasporic individuals formulate their cultural identity through hybridization and
assimilation.
 11

Conclusion
This paper divulges the issues related to the conceptualization of Diaspora identity
formulation based on the theoretical outposts and the critical literary analysis and finds the
following hypotheses:
1. The diasporic individual maintains a strong connection to the original homeland.
2. They share homeland values and traditions and maintain family relationships.
3. After arriving in the New World, they experience cultural dislocation and assimilate
new cultural ethics to survive.
4. Diaspora identity does not reflect the fixed boundaries that can differentiate them
from each other; in some cases, they can overlap and cannot be measured by a certain
space or location.
5. The diaspora presents double and collective consciousness.
6. They develop their cultural identity through transformation and hybridization.

So far as the literature is concerned, in most of Mukherjee’s novels, all the events in those
texts occur both in India and America—a multicultural ambience—and all the female
protagonists in each text live or work as diaspora citizens in America, Canada or the UK,
hailing from India. After they arrive in the New World, they encounter cultural in-
betweenness and manage to assimilate and adapt to new cultural behaviour. This paves the
way for their gradual process of cultural hybridization, and henceforth, they find the
trajectory of ethnic and cultural identity transformation in the transnational milieu. In this
process, diaspora identity is formulated. Finally, the different dimensions of diaspora identity
do not reflect the fixed boundaries that can differentiate them from each other, and in some
cases, they can overlap and cannot be measured by a certain space or location. Diaspora
people are like nomads moving from one place to another, as Homi K Bhabha points out:
“...we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex
figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and
exclusion” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 2). Consequently, members of the diaspora configure their
identity through cultural assimilation and the process of hybridization.

Disclosure Statement
The author reports no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding Details
 12

The author received no specific financial grant for the research or publication of this article.

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