مطالب

the argument of the present research is based on the premise that assiduous attention to the transgenerational traumatic aspect of diasporic displacements not only gives voice to the often covert narratives of loss and pain encrypted in the diasporic literature, but it also sheds light on the process of the negotiation of subjectivities by both the first and the second-generation diasporic subjects. As a critical inquiry into the literary representations of diasporic subjectivities via a predominantly psychoanalytically-inspired approach, the present analysis of diasporic short fiction thus sits restlessly on the nexus of both diaspora studies and the psychoanalytic studies of trauma. Through a close textual analysis of two samples of short fiction authored by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Tania James, the study seeks to present its intergenerational conception of diasporic subjectivities in the light of the theory of transgenerational haunting. It explores the ways in which different generations of diasporic subjects are haunted by the phantom of a (M)otherland whose uncanny shadow is woven into the confounding reality of diasporic life. This phantom constantly exposes the diasporic self to a psychic space of empathy whose emergence is facilitated by the presence of an external other who through cathartic interactions with the diasporic self endows her/him with a fair chance to (re-)negotiate her/his subjectivities. It is also to be placed on the threshold of a belated mourning for a hitherto-repressed oft-internalized sense of otherness, if not an oft-occluded shame of unbelongingness. 

The work of Slavoj Žižek includes the highly arguable concepts towards the re-articulation of the Lacanian notion of the death drive.This paper presents an expository trend joining the fragmentary depictions of the death drive inSuzan-Lori Parks's play, Father Comes Home from the Wars. The present analysis begins with tracing the most intuitive aspects of Žižek’s re-articulations of the concept in connection to the Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalytical concepts of the death drive. Opposing the notions of the death drive as biological instinct, Žižek instead highlights the Lacanian notions of the excess of negativity, "undead" eternal life, and symbolic mortification. In Father Comes Home from the Wars, the death drive stimulates Hero as a social antagonist and allows him to defy his constraints as a slave and develop an entirely different man with a new form of subjectivity. His struggle towards freedom makes him the subject of conflict and disintegration. Hero's attempts are in vain and ineffective as freedom tends to figure forth to the Real and becomes the target of oppression. The paper ends with focusing on how the notion of self-relating negativity consolidates the foregoing Lacanian concepts and how the illusion of freedom opens up the experience of loss or trauma and undermines Hero's desire for emancipation.

The present paper is an attempt to study Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel, Ten Things I Hate about Me (2006) from Judith Butler's performative perspective. The main question of the research is whether the diasporic subjectivity of the Muslim protagonist of the novel is innate, static, and finalized or rather performatively constructed. It is argued that Jamilah, as a diasporic Muslim woman, is not a being with an essentialized identity; rather she is a becoming whose identity is constructed in diaspora. It is contended that Jamilah is a discursive subject, hailed by the dominant Lebanese, Australian, and Islamic discourses. Butler's attestation of the infelicity of some performances leaves space for the resignification and reappropriation of the discourses, which attempt to interpellate the subject. The study seeks to demonstrate that Jamilah as the diasporic doer, who is constituted as a result of the performative linguistic, corporal, culinary, and artistic deeds, is not determined by any of the discourses she is immersed in, and thus becomes a hybridized liminal subject who negotiates the discourses of home and host cultures through evading the dualistic logic.