Circulation of the discourse of American nationalism through allegiance to consumer citizenship in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake
This essay examines South Asian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s literary engagement with the re-Orientalization and sexualization of a collective subject described as Indian diaspora within the context of contemporary consumer culture. The essay explores the relationship between Lahiri’s best-sel...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2017
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11627/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11627/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11627/1/13966-52945-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | This essay examines South Asian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s literary engagement with
the re-Orientalization and sexualization of a collective subject described as Indian diaspora
within the context of contemporary consumer culture. The essay explores the relationship
between Lahiri’s best-selling novel, The Namesake (2003) and its contemporary society by
taking the point of view that diasporic literary writing is an example of a Foucauldian social
apparatus—a new form of governmentality—that was used for the production of American
nationalism after the events of 9/11. Here, we expose the material and ideological
specificities that formulate a particular group of women as powerless consumers in the
context of the post-cold war period. More precisely, we focus on the ideological elements of
the routine consuming experiences of these women to unpack the manner in which the
macropolitics of economic and political structures influence the micropolitics of the everyday
experiences of Indian immigrants in the capitalist society. In Lahiri’s fiction, the Indian
woman’s body—in its both first- and second- generation types—is figured as a deliberate site
of economic and erotic excess that fundamentally complies with the contemporary
heteronormative ideology of patriarchal capitalism, wherein the woman is essentially treated
as the archetypal consumer. In effect, as the essay further argues, Lahiri’s fiction dances to
the tune of Western marketing demands of production and consumption. |
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