Placing the “Other”: An Understanding of the Sense of Placelessness in V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival

Abstract

The notions of time guiding and controlling human activity, behaviour and experience has been overpowered by spatial structures. The indentured labour trade ensuing from the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 resulted in mass exodus from the Indian subcontinent, forming the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. In understanding the socio-politically marginalised communities, it is of utmost importance to acquire an understanding of the relationship between such displaced individuals and the space they inhabit. Whether, it is a rural or an urban setting is a question of secondary status, since the place of a diasporic settlement transforms it into a space for struggle, emancipation and reclamation. An engaging discourse is created out of the hybrid culture emerging from resistance and subversion of a canonical set of doctrines.