Roy, Bidhan Chandra. 2009. Globalisation and the Negotiation of Identity in South Asian Diasporic Fiction in Britain. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

This thesis responds to gaps in the theorization of South Asian diasporic fiction in Britain and makes a new contribution to the emergent field of Anglophone literature. Given the growing prominence of literature written by South Asian diasporic writers in Britain, theorising the challenges that it represents to traditional categories of identity and literature has become a pressing concern. Working from the premise that as the history of British colonialism recedes and a new phase of global integration intensities, the critical tools of postcolonialism become less useful in reading South Asian diasporic fiction in Britain, this thesis responds to the need for a critical framework that is able to address the relationships between identities and contemporary globality. It examines the politics of representation that are involved in positioning and categorising South Asian diasporic fiction in Britain within such a world, and asks questions of who and what is represented, how and to whom, in a selection of such texts. A secondary aim of this thesis is to address how South Asian diasporic fiction in Britain might extend and qualify theoretical explanations of globalisation. Here narrative analysis is seen as crucial to understanding theoretical explanations of globalisation because all such theory employs a variety of often contradictory narrative forms to make their claims. This thesis asks what role does South Asian diasporic fiction play in constructing narratives of globalisation? And how does literary analysis help us understand how "stories" of globalisation are told? The majority of this study is involved with fleshing out these questions through detailed textual analysis that focuses on the responses of South Asian diasporie texts in light of key theoretical debates of the effects of globalisation upon class, national, Muslim and gender identities. Testing and extending the utility of concepts from both Marxist and liberal explanations of globalisation in this way, the thesis argues for an integrated theoretical approach to a set of texts that operate at the intersection between Britain's colonial past and the complexity of contemporary globality, as well as across local, national and transnational literary contexts.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00028994
Keywords:	fiction, South Asia, diaspora, Britain, Globalisation
Date:	2009
Item ID:	28994
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2020 14:51
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2022 12:51
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/28994

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