Mapping the Position of Women in New
Diaspora: A Study of Transnational Paradigms in Burnt Shadows and Brick
Lane
Mujaffar
Hossain
PhD Research Scholar
Department of English and Foreign Language
Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya (Central
University),
Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, India
Abstract:
Contemporary diasporic identity becomes
dynamic that includes globalizations and transnationalism with the aid of
modern technological development in the field of transportation and tele
communication. The rise of female diasporic writers has enhanced
the glory of South Asian diasporic writings and offered it a distinct identity
in the global literary scene. In post-colonial new diasporic literature,
transnational existence or national ambivalence is one of the prevalent
paradigms. The new way of thinking about the interactions between cultures and
nations is referred to as “trans-national”. Thus, through “time-space
compression,” the second generation of South Asian diasporas transcends
national and cultural boundaries, adopts various cultural practices, and
creates flexible, porous, and fluid identities (Harvey 284). The
second-generation women novelists write from a position of migrant women and
narrate the cultural and spatial uncertainty, aspiring to imagine a state of
togetherness in difference in culture and politics. The novelists in the select
texts highlight the dilemmas of the diasporic women and their cultural and
national ambiguity in the relocated spaces. This study explores how
transnationalism is used as an emancipatory tool for the women to develop
independent, self-reliant identities in the novels through the postcolonial
concepts of “third space,”“cultural hybridity,” and “transnationality.” It also
looks into the transgressive existence
of the female characters with their constantly changing identities beyond
boundaries.
Keywords: New Diaspora, Transnational, National
ambiguity, Third Space, Cultural Hybridity
Introduction:
The writer Randolph Bourne popularised the term ‘trans-national’ in his
seminal article “Trans-National America” which denotes the new way of thinking
about the interactions between cultures and countries (94). Hence, the notion
of transnational identity offers a new dimension to the study of Diaspora. In
the common-sense, Diaspora meant to the dispersed people; dispersed means
dwelling in a space that deviates people from their cultural and national
practices. People who are in the diaspora
typically have recollections of their home countries, which makes them feel
alienated in their new locations. This kind of diasporic community is referred
to as “exclusive diaspora,” and it is distinguished by a strong desire to
preserve the authenticity of its original culture while maintaining a continual
distance from the culture of the host country (Mishra 423). These
essentially represents the pre-modern diaspora situations from the slow
communication era, when telecommunication was less developed than it is now. However, the Contemporary scholars of
diaspora such as William Safran, Homi K. Bhabha, Steven Vertovec, James
Clifford, James Fergson, and Stuart Hall have defined diaspora in a different
way with a wide range of possibility. As William Safran, a prominent scholar
known for his work on diaspora studies rightly identified diaspora as “a
minority ethnic population living in one or several host countries but
maintaining sentimental and material ties to the country of origin, which thus
forms an integral part of their ethnic identity” (83). Steven Vertovec claims
that migrants “maintain affiliations to families, communities, and causes
outside the boundaries of the nations-state to which they have migrated”, which
sheds more light on diasporic identity regarding homeland and host land (574).
As a result, Vertovec re-examines the limits of diasporic identities and
relationships both inside and outside of host countries. He also attracts our
attentions to diaspora as an arena where new cultural spaces can be created,
which is a distinctive quality of second-generation South Asian woman diaspora.
Therefore, in this study I will highlight the complex interplay of identity,
memory, and transnational connections within the second-generation diasporic
community with special reference to the women participants in the two novel Burnt
Shadow and Brick Lane.
The distinguish phenomenon of the
second-generation new diaspora is the active involvement of women in the
process of identity development, which was lacking in the old diaspora
scenario. Diasporic literature makes it
evident that women’s roles were generally passive and that they were forced to
travel to other countries because their male dependent had to migrate
there, leaving them with little chance to establish new identities there. She
seldom ventured outside to explore the new culture of the relocated land;
instead, she spent much of her time in housekeeping. It is believed that
the well-known male diaspora writers of that time either failed to adequately
represent women's life in dispersed circumstances or were incapable of understanding
the feelings of female diasporic figures. As a result, women are excluded from the dialogue until or unless the
female diasporic writers come to narrate them. In the second-generation
diasporic writing women writers are obviously in leading position.
The commendable progress in the field of
science and technology; particularly in the transport and tele communication
system bring the world closer and shorten the span of time and distance of
places. This phenomenon of globalization and late capitalism that David Harvey
called “time-space compression,” affecting the national and cultural identities
of the contemporary second-generation diaspora, with regard to the native land
and the country of settlement (284). Harvey writes:
I use the word ‘compression’ because a strong
case can be made that the history of capitalism has been characterized by
speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the
world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us. The time takes to traverse
space. . . As space appears to shrink to a ‘global village’ of
telecommunications and a ‘spaceship earth’ of economic and ecological
interdependencies. (240)
Therefore, now it may be acclaimed the world becomes a global village.
Now, I am getting into the core subject of this study, since we become familiar
to the background of new trends of diaspora and able to distinguish some
important basic grounds from the old diaspora, it is clear to us that the new
second-generation diaspora is more liberal than the first-generation diaspora.
There is more than one trajectory that makes new diasporic identities more
liberal and transgressive. The speedy communication system has brought major
shift in the immigrants’ lives. It transforms the emigrants’ sense of
alienation into a sense of belonging by fostering a connection between them and
their home societies. It facilitates a chance of maintaining a strong
connection to different spaces, cultures and nations to the contemporary
immigrants. Naturally, their subjectivity becomes blur; the belongingness of
the new diasporic participant is a big question – it may be the question of
cultural belongingness or national belongingness, every identity is mixed up.
There is no monolithic and dominating culture in this identity. This kind of
plurality in cultural and national identity is termed as transnationality. Homi
K. Bhabha’s explanations of hybridity, third space, ambivalence, and liminality
have created the foreground of the idea of transnational fluid identity.
In his introduction to The Location of
Culture, Bhabha (1994) sheds light upon the “liminal” negotiation of
cultural identity across differences of race, class, gender, and cultural
traditions (3). He argues that cultural identity cannot be ascribed to
pre-given, a historical cultural traits that define the conventions of
ethnicity nor can “colonizer” and “colonized” be viewed as separate entities
that define themselves independently. Instead, Bhabha suggests that the
negotiation of cultural identity involves the continual exchange of cultural
performances that in turn produce a mutual recognition of cultural difference.
This “liminal” space is a “hybrid” site that witnesses the production of
cultural meaning (Bhabha 2). As he claims: “The representation of difference
must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural
traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of
difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation
that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerges in moments of
historical transformation” (2). Bhabha opposed the “essentialist” views of
cultural identity, those that try to define culture as pure and monolithic by
means of national, historical and cultural border. For him, the notion of
cultural liminality, should replace the essentialist polarity between a nation
and other nations (148). Thus, the concept of interstitiality, hybridity,
liminality, according to Bhabha, should undo the binary opposition that assist
to construct transnational identity (142).
To discuss the transnational or cross border
cultural identity one more Bhabian concept- “third space” is of importance
here. This concept concentrates on border situations as the spaces where
identities are performed and contested (Bhabha 12). Third space is a
transcendental concept that is constantly expanding to include an “other”, thus
create a field of contestation and re-negotiation of boundaries and cultural
identities. It represents the fusion of the first and second space into a
networked place that can be inhibited by multiple factors engage with one
another. Refusing all the traditional notion of binary oppositions, Bhabha
asserts that hybridity is what is “new, neither the one nor the other” (25).
Therefore, none of the contesting culture is genuine or pure.
Another prominent cultural critic Stuart Hall,
in his well acclaimed essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, argues that
cultural identity is affected by the location and the community we live in, but
it is not completely determined them (131-38). Hall regards cultural identity
as an ongoing product of history and culture, rather than a finished
product. Hall observes: “Perhaps instead
of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural
practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a
‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted
within, not outside, representation” (222). Hall further suggests that
“cultural identity is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’ and it
belongs to the future as well as to the past”(222).
Burnt Shadows (2009) by Shamsie is a novel about history,
war, and constant displacement. It is divided into four sections and covers the
period from the end of World War II in Japan to the aftermath of the 9/11
attacks in the United States of America. The story of the novel is set in
diverse locations documenting the catastrophic impact of war and partition on
humanity, identity, and daily lives of individuals through the fictional
characters who have witnessed and experienced horrible situations of wars and
partition. Shamsie tells a possible story of a young girl’s voyage, as well as
the journeys of other victims, overlapping many identities, spaces, locales,
and politics through which she intended to present a woman’s identity formation
in the transnational world of new diaspora.
The plot opens in Nagasaki, industrial
heartland and military hub of Japan where the United States dropped a nuclear
bomb on August 9, 1945. The story then shifts to Delhi in the final year of the
British Raj recounting the national movements of India against colonial rule. Though,
the British retreated in 1947, a political confrontation erupted among the
religious group, splitting Indian continent. Shamsie chronicles the brutality
and communal crimes before and after the partition in this section of the
novel. As a result, a large number of Indian Muslims moved to Pakistan and
Hindus in the newly formed Pakistan felt unsafe and moved to India. Third
section of the narrative takes place in Pakistan in the 1980s, at a period of
civil strife and Soviet military control over Afghanistan, which triggered the
global Cold War. The Afghan and Pakistani people’s lives are made intolerable
by the Cold War between the two most powerful countries, Soviet Russia and
America. Finally, the narrative comes to an end by depicting the consequences
of 9/11 in New York and Afghanistan.
Many border crossings are interwoven
throughout the plot of the novel, challenging the associations to national
boundaries, languages, and cultures in the development of national identity.
Shamsie establishes and cross-examines the relationship between nationality,
culture, and identity in Burnt Shadows by constant travelling and reshaping
the national and cultural identities of the characters as they move beyond
geopolitical and cultural borders, dismantling and creating new identities. As
a result, nationalism remains a problematic concept in the novel, and the
characters are unable to form a firm attachment to any one country because the
narrative’s setting of war and religious horrors denies them to stay and live
in any specific space. This is one of the reasons why the novel’s
protagonist Hiroko Tanakaremains skeptical to the notion of nationalism and
adhere the moving transnationality.
Throughout the novel Burnt Shadows,
Kamila Shamsie tells the story of two families, one Asian and the other the
Western- Ashraf-Tanaka and Burton-Weiss family. The plot of the novel
criss-crosses with history in order to reshape identity, through
circumscribing, maintaining, crossing, altering, moving, or eliminating spatial
and cultural constraints. The protagonist, Hiroko Tanaka recounts her
relationship with Konrad, a German man. They had grown close and vowed to marry
and start a family, only a few minutes before Konrad was turned into a burnt
shadow by the bombing, as Hiroko tells Konrad, “We’ll leave them all behind,
Konrad. We'll discover an island where we’ll have to live alone” (Shamsie
22). Hiroko’s Japanese identification and Konrad’s German identity enunciates a
subversive hybrid space or “third space” (Bhabha 211) that calls into question
the conventional discourse of bipolar positioning. The bombing on Nagasaki had
not only left her just physical scars but entirely devasted her world and
turned her surroundings into hellish place to live. However, the frightening
aftermath of the attack altered and reduced her to ‘hibakusha,’ the Japanese
term for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb survivors following World War II. She
does not agree with the idea of reducing her identity to that of a ‘hibakusha’.
As a result, Hiroko could not embrace any national identity and loyalty in the
fear of losing her individual identity. It also causes her to travel to a
different world, to a different country, and to adopt new culture, language,
and identity by crossing national and cultural boundaries.
Therefore, she flies to India to visit
Konrad’s step-sister Elizabeth in Delhi in quest of new identity. She meets
there Sajjad Ashraf, James' assistant with whom she learns Urdu, a new language
for Hiroko. They fall in love and got married. After their marriage many
mutinies and movements against the British rule arouse. The colonial force had
been defeated, and the British had retreated from India. However, another
catastrophe strikes Hiroko and Sajjad’s lives. The growing communal violence
between Hindu and Muslim of British left India resulted in partition. The
partition of India and Pakistan led to huge migration from both countries, with
people fleeing their homes in quest of a new home in an unknown space. Hiroko,
now Sajjad’s wife, also relocates to Pakistan to protect her family from
communal violences and atrocities. Her national and cultural connection to the
nations has a direct correlation with historical events, it may be the
Partition of India that forced her to move to Pakistan, or Indo-Pak nuclear
threats that sent her to the U.S.A. Hiroko is constantly forced to travel
throughout her life, transforming her national and cultural identities by
putting them in flux.
Hiroko is the only character in the novel who
appears in every section. She travels from Japan to India, India to Pakistan,
and finally to New York. Hiroko is portrayed as a woman without a country, a
woman without a religion, and a woman who can easily transcend boundaries
without jeopardising her agency and strength. Shamsie portrays her as a woman
warrior who survives a catastrophic tragedy and fights every new challenge that
comes her way. Hiroko’s tragic background in Japan, full of loss and misery,
could have killed her will to live but as a bold and sensible woman she forges
ahead carrying the past gently in her heart. Shamsie describes her- “She had
become, in fact, a figure out of myth. The character who loses everything and
is born anew in blood.” (Shamsie 48-9)
The renowned book Brick Lane is written
by Bangladeshi-British author Monica Ali and released in 2003. Following an
arranged marriage to an older man a Bangladeshi woman relocates to Brick Lane
in London, the city recognised for its rich cultural diversity and historical
significance. The book explores, the protagonist, Nazneen’s issues in relation
to cultural adaption, her feelings of loneliness, and her changing self-perception.
As time goes on, Nazneen becomes more active in the neighbourhood Bangladeshi
community and develops close relationships with numerous Bangladeshi families
and women. She witnesses the struggle of Bangladeshi women who have
settled in this alien country. She becomes friend of Mrs. Islam, Mrs. Azad, and
Razia. Nazneen encounters issues of freedom, love, and self-identity via her
interactions and experiences. The story covers themes of tradition, as
represented by Chanu, versus modernity, as represented by all of the female
characters. They all share immigrant experiences and the quest for identity
within a new cultural setting. In this much praised story, Ali offers a
transnational perceptive of individual identity construction for the women
immigrants.
Cultural and national identity is presented
in a problematic way in the novel, where identity is constructed on the ground
of the malleable boundaries between two nations or cultural communities.
Transnational identity developed as a result of crossing boundaries as it
enables characters to adapt the host community. The overlapping and mixing of
identities transcend the notion of fixity of national and cultural identity and
create a field of ambivalent fluid identity. Ali, in her present novel
portrayed her female characters in such a situation that they often belonging
to the third space that provides them a new understanding of individual and
cultural identity. Nazneen, being uprooted from her homeland, adaptation
becomes an urgency for her. Initially, she maintains her homeland culture and avoids
meeting the local people. First few years, Nazneen was obedient to her
patriarchal husband and only did what he wanted her to do. The great
transformation in her life and identity comes when she decides to earn herself
for the family by sewing clothes. One think is significant to remember here,
that the place they live in London is Brick Lane, it is a place for Bangladeshi
community, a kind of ghetto. Therefore, Nazneen easily meets other
Bangladeshi women and learnt from them the process of adaptation and the art of
living in between the cultures. It is Razia, who suggests Nazneen to start the
sewing work which in the long run brings all the things Nazneen needed as a
woman immigrant to assimilate in the new culture. While she tries to assimilate
the culture of the settled land, she maintains relation to her siter Hasina who
is in Bangladesh. Nazneen, though dwells in London, knows all the economic,
political upheavals and about the entire climate changes in Bangladesh. Despite being in London she does not forget
her home culture; she wears Sarees and does her prayer regularly along with
Qur’an recitation. On the other side, as an empowered women in London, she goes
outside to the streets and market to buy her sewing materials, joins the club
meeting of ‘Bengal Tigers’ club. Thus, cultural hybridity becomes an effective
way for Nazneen to assimilate herself into the British Culture. Ali, through Nazneen indicates that
identities in new diaspora cannot be strictly reduced to fixed categories as
there is much scope for transcending the cultural values in the new diaspora.
Therefore, the essential concept of the essentialists and the significance of
national and cultural boundaries or territorial borders are diminished. Thus,
it can be asserted that Ali, in Brick Lane portrayed Nazneen as a
culturally hybrid as well as transnational woman character.
Almost all of the
female characters in the story including the protagonist Nazneen—live
culturally hybrid lives. All of the women characters that Ali portrays in the
book avidly engage in the process of assimilation, adaption, creolization,
and integration into the host culture. Razia, who is the mother of Shefali and
Tariqmoves to Brick Lanewith her husband who works at a Bucher’s shop. After
the death of her husband, Razia felt at sea in the new land. Razia has to
manage the expenses of the family by arranging second hand clothes for the
children and for herself. Despite acknowledging defeat, she struggles to manage
household in the new location and culture. She starts the same job that had
been doing by her husband, and through this job she supports her family very
well. It is Razia who first of all suggests Nazneen to do sewing job, and
through this job Nazneen find herself economically empowered. Later on, this
job invokes her to live an independent life the way women live in England. She
began to attend club meeting and going out to market with Razia. Another women
character, Mrs. Azad represents a true spirit of new diasporic community when
she claims that little changes in her life style makes her much advanced and
empowered woman. She says- “Listen, when I’m in Bangladesh I put on a sari and
cover my head and all that. But here I go out to work. I work with white girls and
I’m just one of them…The society is all wrong. Everything should change for
them. They don’t have to change one thing. That is the tragedy.” (Ali 114).
While we study the character of Mrs. Islam, we find the true transnational
aspects of modern diasporic figures. She lives in Brick Lane by her business of
money lending to the Bangladeshi community and without any kind of fear and
hesitations she collects money from her parties in the immigrated land.
Finally, we should discuss transnational characteristics embedded in Sahana who
has been exposed to British society as the older daughter of Chanu and Nazneen.
She damages her entire collection of salwar kameez and prefers to wear jeans.
Every time her father requests her to return Bangladesh with his family, she
objects. Thus, transnationalism emancipates Sahana from the patriarchy and
religious prejudices of her native land Bangladesh.
Conclusion:
Following the study of the novels Burnt Shadows and Brick
Lane, it may be asserted that the two authors stress the notion of
“deterritorialization” that breaks the notion of cultural wholes and fixed
identities by representing second-generation woman characters.
Deterritorialism, and transnationalism allows women in South Asia to break free
from patriarchal, cultural, and national restrictions that offers a free life
of self-asserting identity to women. In the text, Burnt Shadows we have
seen Tanaka, as a global citizen who has established a secure life and
possessions in other countries. She is not a member of any particular culture,
to her, borders are meaningless and her identity is always shifting. As a
result, we cannot simply equate her identity with hyphenated existences like
Indo-Japanese, Indo-Pak, or Pak-American because she is constantly forced to
shift her location and identity as a result of nation-building events and power
politics. Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman,
in the novel Brick Lane also crosses the national, cultural and
patriarchal boundaries and creates her transnational fluid identity in Birck
Lane, England. Therefore, in conclusion it may be said that existence of
diasporic people become transgressive, they have no fixed cultural and national
identities which is affiliated to a single nation or cultural group. The
identity of the second-generation new diaspora is transnational, transcultural
and fluid identity that provides emancipation to the women of the new diaspora.
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