Migration Literature and Hybridity : The Different Speeds of Transcultural Change

Using Three Literary Analyses To Show What Happens Once We Leave Behind The Theoretical Poverty Of Celebratory Readings Of Contemporary Migration And Hybridity Literature, This Book Offers A Way Out Of The Theoretical Deadlock Of Putting Hybridity Against Purity Or Flux Against Fixity. A Critical Re-engagement With The Theorisation Of Hybridity And Becoming. From Celebration To Problemisation ; Forces Of Sameness And Difference In Organic Hybridity ; Forces Of Sameness And Difference In International Hybridity -- The Speeds Of The Migrant Hero And Hybridity Discourses In Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, Jamal Mahjoub's The Carrier And V.s. Naipaul's The Enigma Of Arrival. The Migrant Hero's Incredible Speed In Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine ; Mongrel Speeds, Slow Danes And Telescopic Gazes In Jamal Mahjoub's The Carrier ; Fast And Slow Becomings In The Migrant's Vision In V.s. Naipaul's The Enigma Of Arrival. Sten Pultz Moslund. Includes Bibliographical References(p. 235-244) And Index. Using three literary analyses to show what happens once we leave behind the theoretical poverty of celebratory readings of contemporary migration and hybridity literature, this book offers a way out of the theoretical deadlock of putting hybridity against purity or flux against fixity. Migration Literature and Hybridity reinvigorates the study of postcolonial hybridity by offering a way out of the theoretical deadlock of pitting hybridity against purity or flux against fixity. The book theorises hybridity primarily in terms of time and develops Bakhtin's notions of organic and intentional hybridity in ways that enable us to work with several speeds of becoming, hybridisation and cultural change. Through Deleuze's theory of becoming and Lotman's cultural semiotics, the book proposes intentional and organic hybridity as two extremes on a continuum ranging from transcultural change as fast and highly visible to transcultural change as largely obscured and very slow - the latter being the condition of any supposedly pure culture. The theory of the first part of the book is expounded in three detailed studies of Mukherjee's Jasmine, Mahjoub's The Carrier and Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival that engage the entire spectrum of hybridity from the enunciation of delirious transcultural change to hybridity as a slow 'changing sameness'. The readings illustrate how a more comprehensive engagement with transcultural literature is enabled once we leave behind the mere celebration of contemporary migration and its hybrid heroes Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-25 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 From Celebration to Problemisation....Pages 29-47 Forces of Sameness and Difference in Organic Hybridity....Pages 48-65 Forces of Sameness and Difference in Intentional Hybridity....Pages 66-97 Front Matter....Pages 99-99 The Migrant Hero’s Incredible Speed in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine....Pages 101-135 Mongrel Speeds, Slow Danes and Telescopic Gazes in Jamal Mahjoub’s The Carrier....Pages 136-172 Fast and Slow Becomings in the Migrant’s Vision in V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival....Pages 173-214 Conclusion....Pages 215-226 Back Matter....Pages 227-257 Using three literary analyses to show what happens once we leave behind the theoretical poverty of celebratory readings of contemporary migration and hybridity literature, this text offers a way out of the theoretical deadlock of putting hybridity against purity or flux against fixity