SEMIOTICS OF SUPERIMPOSITION, TRANSLATABILITY OF GOVERNABLE SPACES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2017.33.826835Keywords:
Superimposition, Sign, Space, Diaspora, LahiriAbstract
Tales of immigrants and accounts of diaspora experience appear frequently in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Indian-American fiction. Her narratives are crowded with visual objects, all with cultural significance and spatial function. This study is a visit to the micro space of a Bengali couple in ‘This Blessed House’ of Lahiri to explore the geography of the house and the exhibitions therein; and, in the meantime, to explicate the struggles which seek to inscribe preferred meanings of the objects onto the outdoor and indoor geography of the house and to translate spatial codes into cultural language. The researcher has followed a progressive approach, as the method with the story development, to picture gradual and multilayer superimposition of foreign emblems on the homely decorations in the house and to study their function. It is unfolded at the end of the paper that the emerging relations between the mixed signs on show signify a challenge to the sole ownership of space, its governable uniformity and its axiomatic truth. The findings are thought to call into question and cast doubts about the soundness of ideological representations from diasporic experiences.
References
Amster, M. H. (2008). The Social Optics of Space: Visibility and Invisibility in the Borderlands of Borneo. Space and Culture 11(2), 176-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331208317068
Chen, K. H. (1992). Cultural Studies and the Politics of Internationalization: an Interview with Hall. In Morley & Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (pp.393-409). London: Routledge.
Cosgrove, D. (1989). Geography is Everywhere: Culture and Symbolism in Human Landscape. In Oakes and Price, (Eds.), The Cultural Geography Reader (pp. 176-85) Oxon: Routledge.
Deesawadi, N. (2017). Response to the Use of Storytelling in Thai Museums: The Creation of ‘Sacred Space' in architecture related to the Buddha in Thailand Could be Possible. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences. 3(2), 543–562.
Hall, S. (1986). Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. In Morley & Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (pp. 411-41). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1177/019685998601000202
Hall, S. (1976). Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain and Policing Crisis. Tony Jefferson, (Ed.), (2nd ed ). New York: Routledge.
Hirschman, C. (2014). Immigration to the United States: Recent Trends and Future Prospects. Malays J Econ Studies, 51(1):69-85.
Lahiri, J.. (1999). This Blessed House. In Lahiri, Jhumpa, 2000, Interpreter of Maladies (pp.136-57). London: Flamingo.
Nickl, T. (2011). The Hypocrisy of Camp, Material Culture in Lahiri’s The Blessed House. Americana Journal of American Studies Student Association, 9: 37-46
Phinney, J.S., Horenczyk, G., Liebkind, K., Vedder, P. (2001). Ethnic Identity, Immigration and Well-Being: an Interactional Perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3): 493-510. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00225
Rouhvand, H. (2014). Human Geography: Semiotics of Landscape in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Narratives. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Science 158: 132-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.057
Stoican, A. E. (2007). Continuities and Discontinuities in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. Conference: KCTOS: Knowledge, Creativity and Transformations of Societies. Vienna, 6-9 December 2007.
Thrift, N. (2006). Space. Theory, Culture & Society 23 (2-3): 139-146. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276406063780
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Hassan Rouhvand
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
