The Historical Context of The Namesake

.The Historical Context of The Namesake

Demonological traditions lying at the core of American history. In his study of the history of demonology in American politics, Rogin identifies three major moments: racial, class and ethnic and the cold war. Commenting on the racial moment, he says "'History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery', wrote William Carlos Williams. He was calling attention to the historical origins of the United States in violence against peoples of colour. The expropriation of Indian land and exploitation of black labour lie at the root not only of America's economic development, but of its political conflicts and cultural identity as well. A distinctive American political tradition, fearful of primitivism ,disorder and conspiracy, developed in response to peoples of colour. That tradition draws its energy from alien threats to the American way of life and sanctions violent and exclusionary responses to them" (Rogin, 1).

Language and cultures are transformed as they come into contact with other languages and cultures. Diasporic writing raises questions regarding the definitions of' home  'and 'nation'. Schizophrenia and/ornostalgia are often preoccupations of these writers as they seek to locate themselves in new Farahmandian, Hamid, Atefeh Yousefi, and Fatemeh Ghorbani Rizi. "Diasporic language and identity in" Namesake"." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 5.5 (2015): 952. cultures". Hence it isliterature that represents the history in the context of present social structure. (Farahmandian, 952)

In situating Lahiri’s stories within a panoptic system, the present essay in a way repeats Lahiri’s own scrutiny—by enunciating itself as a critical gaze. If Lahiri’s 12 diasporic gaze works to objectify and relocate subjects, often into positions they might never otherwise goi the study’s critical gaze insistently re-positions these writings, locating them in new contexts, opening up their fiction-discourse into discourses the stories themselves might want not to set foot in .In this manner, this essay endeavors to evince the political, cultural and affective consequences of Lahiri’s diasporic writings and their particular enunciations of the literary gaze. To achieve this goal, we aim to detail the manner in which the stories’ exercise of visual operations rigidly corresponds with those of the Panopticon. We argue that her narrative produces a kind of panoptic machine that underpins the ‘modes of social regulation and control’ that Foucault has explained as “disciplinary technologies”, the set of material elements and “techniques that serve as weapons, relays , communication routes and support for the power and knowledge relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge” . In addition, this essay situates Lahiri’s stories within a historical-political context, identifying the way in which panopticism defines Lahiri’s writings as both a record of and a participant in the social, sexual and political ‘paranoia’ behind the propaganda of America’s self-image as the land of freedom. We maintain that Lahiri’s fiction situates itself in complex relation to the postcolonial concerns of the late twentieth century, suggesting that through their fascination with a visual literalization of the panoptic machine, and by privileging the masculine gaze, the stories legitimate the perpetuation of socially prescribed notion of sexual difference.(Asl, 223) 

     The Namesake’ provides different models of life among people representing distinct cultures and worldviews. Lahiri emphasizes not only the immigrants who leave home to make a new home in the United States but also the endless process of coming and goings that create familial, cultural ,linguistic and economic ties across national borders. Her characters live in between, straddling two worlds, making their identity transnational. Cultural change is a major problem faced by the diasporic community especially by the first generation people. When they try to settle in a new place, they find several changes in the new society. It shocks them and they try to cling to their homeland culture by following it strictly. In The Namesake, Ashima and Ashoke find many Bengali friends and try to create their own community there. Often they used to throw parties to their friends in order to meet them. They wait eagerly for such gatherings. They try to restore their traditions by preparing Indian food, inviting Brahmin for rituals and so on. As Wieviorka states , when a Diaspora community is “constantly rejected or interiorized while only wanting to be included, either socially or culturally, or when this group or this individual is racially discriminated, and demonized under the argument of a supposed cultural different” then the individual or the group is embarrassed and this eventually “leads to a self-definition and behaviors based on this culture and, eventually, racial distinction.”(Macwan, 121,122) 

Reference

• Macwan, Hiral. "A Study of Diasporic Sensibility and acculturation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake." International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities 2.7 (2014).
• Asl, Moussa Pourya, and Nurul Farhana Low bt Abdullah. "Patriarchal regime of the spectacle: Racial and gendered gaze in Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction." International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 6.2 (2017).
• Farahmandian, Hamid, Atefeh Yousefi, and Fatemeh Ghorbani Rizi. "Diasporic language and identity in" Namesake"." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 5.5 (2015) .
• Rogin, M. 1984. Kiss me deadly: Communism, motherhood and Cold War movies . Representations 6: 1–36.