Dislocation And Cultural Assimilation In Jhumba Lahiri’s The Namesake

Résumé: This dissertation presents the different experiences and problems faced by immigrants in an alien land, in Jhumpa Lahiri the namesake, the novel reveals many authentic facts about what an immigrant came across away from his/her homeland, Jhumba narrates the novel in a diasporic context, where the Ganguli family who came from India tries to put a definition for itself as a Bengali family in the united states of America, this study is an attempt to analyze the novel and to cover the main station and events during the Ganguli’s life in the united states, however, the work should prove how Jhumba Lahiri develops the themes of dislocation and cultural assimilation in the novel .besides it aims to explore where the immigrant writer goes beyond conventional wisdom and creates the ‘third space’ where they create their identity as transnational. Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of ‘third space’ (third space where we negotiate between different identities) as the common ground of negotiation and transformation, which is neither assimilation nor otherness but represents the history of coalition building and the transnational and cultural diasporic connection. It deals also with the cultural and psychological issues of the protagonist characters in the novel by going through a deep analysis to cover the socio-cultural dimensions describing and presenting the characters and all the events in which they passed through The study requires a Sociohistorical background about the immigrants, specifically the Indian ones and their status in America. In addition to that, this work explores the meaning of assimilation and dislocation in order to give a comprehensible analysis about this diasporic experiences The ultimate goal of the study is to expose the author’s purpose behind writing such a Novel, to highlight and shed light on many themes related to diaspora and identity such as: hybridity, third space , ambivalence, assimilation, and displacement according to the situation of each character

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