| This dissertation represents the first extended exploration of Homi Bhabha's notions about hybridity in relation to various subject positions in South Asian Anglophone prose of the late colonial period. The main argument is that the hybrid's race and gender inflect the ways in which enunciations could be performed in imperial discourse, and that these elements also impact the ways in which they could be received by contemporaries. By exploring subject positions with a recognition of their race and gender status within the overlapping discourses of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India, this study finds that Homi Bhabha's theorizations represent only the beginning of study into the nature and impact of hybridity. Although there are commonalities among all of the writings discussed in this dissertation, the writings emerging from Bhabha's "Third Space" vary greatly in their destabilizing or supporting of discourses. In this project, the four race-gender coordinates are represented by Rudyard Kipling, Mohandas Gandhi, Annie Besant, and Pandita Ramabai. |
