Arguments with nationalism in the fiction of the Indian diaspora (Samuel Selvon, V. S. Naipaul, Trinidad and Tobago, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy)

This dissertation engages with the ideas of diaspora that have become increasingly prominent in current discussions of cultural politics. While I take issue with some of the inflated claims made for diaspora discourse, I also discern in it the potential to generate a powerful reconstructive critique of postcolonial nationalism. In a context in which the postcolonial nation-state is beleaguered by obstacles at every turn, I suggest that diaspora thought might offer a pathway for renewing national agendas---and in the process might also achieve a more fully grounded sense of its own location. With these goals in mind, I analyze the terms---and assess the consequences---of varied arguments with postcolonial nationalism conducted from diasporic sites. Occasions for these analyses are provided by a significant and newly prominent body of literature: fiction in English by writers of the Indian diaspora. This rapidly growing but still relatively compact body of work constitutes a richly interreferential discourse of diaspora, and a varied series of detours from and returns to the fateful terrain of nationalism.; My first chapter sets out the theoretical stakes for the project by assessing how the thought of Frantz Fanon, one of the classic theorists of national liberation, has been reformulated within diaspora discourse. In contrast to critics like Homi Bhabha, who programmatically discredit Fanon's nationalist writings as outmoded in an era of diaspora, I argue for the relevance of these works for diasporic concerns. Four subsequent chapters set this theoretical vision in relation to significant literary representations of diaspora politics. My second and third chapters discern two poles of diasporic discourse---the communal and the exilic---in the works of two writers of the Indo-Trinidadian diaspora, Sam Selvon and V. S. Naipaul. The final two chapters treat the work of Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy, both born in India, whose writings are nevertheless powerfully informed by the diasporic critique of postcolonial nationalism. While Ghosh presents nationalism as a tragic failure and emphasizes alternative forms of belonging, Roy mounts her devastating critiques of the Indian state and its ideologies of development upon, rather than beyond, the terrain of the nation-state.