“Mixing Geographies, Melting Pots,” An Analysis of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’

Abstract

A text is a product of tradition of interpretations. There is no fixed or determinate meaning that will pass the test of time. With each and every reading, with a different critical approach or with the passage of time, the meanings of literary texts keep on changing. Similarly, in the critical discourse, a critical concept undergoes the same process of refinement. It loses much indeterminacy, and accommodates wider horizons of human nature, by passing through different time periods.

The Concept of ‘hybridity’ and ‘identity crisis’ also underwent a seminal change from its very inception to the present time. It has actually influenced the development of future events. From Bhabian rhetorical formulation of concept to the neoliberal globalization, these concepts are being rearticulated beyond the poetics of race and colonialism. Such shift from geographical and cultural bound colonial discourse, to the ‘new global world’ has unsettled many of the prevailing assumptions through which these concepts have been typically understood.