Broken mirrors: The question of migrancy in south Asian fiction in English

This work interrogates the privileged place that contemporary literary critics have accorded migrancy in describing postcoloniality. I argue that these critics often oversimplify the diverse representations of migrancy by portraying this condition monolithically, thereby re-inscribing the very notions that they conceive new theories of postcolonialism to challenge, such as authenticity and nationalism. My point is that we should resist the presumption that expatriate writers necessarily embody these ideals of postcolonial critique, and my project aims to illuminate this point by proposing to re-read texts that problematize this simplistic view of the migrant condition. I begin by investigating how the most influential postcolonial critics, including Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, have characterized migrancy as a state that inherently enables multiple identities in individuals by forcing them to recognize the limitations and provisions of any "stable" identity. In lieu of these idealized constructions of migrancy, which I term "extravagant migrancy," I contend that postcolonial critics must acknowledge that representations of migrant experiences are frequently more complex than their formulae indicate. As an example. I show how Salman Rushdie portrays migrancy quite differently in three of his best-known works: The Satanic Verses, Shame, and Midnight's Children. In this way, Rushdie's work resists being collapsed into the category of "extravagant migrancy" by envisioning particular migrancies that operate outside this category, partly through the influence of native readers. To analyze the theme of the native reader, I offer close readings of two representative texts: Rohinton Mistry's "Swimming Lessons" and Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain. Both works describe migrant writers and native readers so as to challenge the dichotomy of extravagant migrancy and circumscribed nativism. In conclusion, I investigate the ways in which the presentation of migrancy has informed the material reproduction of literary postcoloniality in three different anthologies: Bruce King's New National and Post-Colonial Literatures: An Introduction, Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West's Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947--1997 , and Amit Chaudhuri's The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature.