| As an immigrant writer, along with multiple imprints of locations and ethnicities, V. S. Naipaul never feels a sense of belonging. When talking about homeland, what are his alternatives? What are the places he could think of as“home”, as the centre of his world?Based on spatial and identity theories to literary text analysis, this thesis seeks to construct a Thirdspace discourse field through dialogues, negotiation, and mediation among different cultures. By exploring the narrator of An Area of Darkness, it is found that India exists more in myth than in reality. After Naipaul steps on the land of India, he finds immediately that the independent India is no longer a land of myth but a land of darkness. The India and its cultural symbols and images revealed in Naipaul’s works have been re-interpreted, re-constructed, and even re-historicized. This thesis is to achieve an understanding of the power relations in the space of cultural encounters, and highlight identity fluidity during the change of space/ locations, thus further exploring V. S. Naipaul’s identity construction dynamics as regard to “homeland”, especially in his An Area of Darkness.The significance of this study is from Naipaul’s case: born in Trinidad where Indian group is a minority, grew up in a vacuum Indian community in a hybrid colonial context, and receiving British elite education while still as an outsider, to get a clue of the general living condition, identity crisis, and writing inspirations of immigrant writers could be observed in today’s context of globalization and immigration. People are becoming overwhelmed by how affluent and complicated multifaceted space could be and to what degree its significant influence could have upon us in the discourse of today’s globalization. The static state of geographic homeland is falling apart; instead, a new form of construction of fluid identity and Spiritual Home emerges. |
