Aesthetics of Displacement in Jhumpa Lahiri's Fiction
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Textbook
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Summary
This study is a new exploration of Lahiri’s fiction through the lens of postmodern aesthetics with reference to the main text The Lowland and the secondary text The Namesake. The Lowland is a narrative of home, displacement and a vague attempt of resettlement in a new world, yet the prime objective of this thesis is to explore how the desire to break with the barriers of tragic past and seeking survival in another world gives a new perspective of Diaspora. The Lowland and The Namesake explore the aesthetics of displacement, rather than touching upon the pains of displacement and dislocation. It is not the existence in the new world which causes the disaster of individuals; rather it is the tragic past which destroys their lives totally. Moreover the rejection of old habits, traditions and conditioning, and a merging with the culture of the new context is an existing issue of the post modern transcultural world. The new world not only offers professional opportunity and financial betterment, but also provides a chance to obliviate the haunted memories of the tragic past. And immigration or displacement is a kind of rebirth in a new culture. The feeling of home is like something haunting and dark which frightens the people. Their quest of survival in a transcultural world, and their will to sacrifice their relations for that reason is an insight into situations of fast changing social fabric in India. This research explores how the male and the female agency works in order to build an individual identity, and it constructs individual realities based on personal experiences of the old world and the changing perceptions of the new world.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
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trans-cultural world. Lahiri's fiction "does not really touch upon the pains of
displacement and dislocation", (Joshi 83) but the aesthetics of displacement; and the
question that how the strife to get themselves "free from the traditional authority and a
past which acts as a prison in both action and thought" (Sim 111) turns the ultimate
truth into an ever-changing reality.
Lahiri points out that, it is not the existence in the new world which causes the
disaster; rather it is the tragic past which triggers this disaster. The characters do not
face cultural shock, but they suffer due to the tragedy that is associated with their
native land, and has shattered their lives totally. This study explores the keen desire to
mingle personal self within a new world, rather than discussing any psychological-
cultural issues.
Aesthetic experience does not seem to develop "organically," on a
field of its own, but to progressively expand and maintain its area of
meaning at the expense of bordering experiences of reality, and this by
usurpations and compensations, the crossing of boundaries, the offer of
competing solutions. (Jauss 112)
In the postmodern world there is no fixed meaning and reality, and the world
can be constructed and interpreted in different ways according to individual
perception. There are no boundaries between facts and fiction, and one person's
fiction is another person's reality. "The Simulacrum is never what hides the truth----it
is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The Simulacrum is true" (qtd. in
Baudrillard 1). The reality varies from person to person. It is through their perception
and experience that individuals construct their own reality. And, moreover, the
perception of the world is not dependent on observation, but on the experiences of
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relationships between people; "Truth and reality are products constructed between
people within relationship" (Sim 112). In Lahiri's fiction the characters' individual
perception of the new culture makes sense to them. In The Routledge Companion to
Postmodernism, it is stated that "Sense-making is perceived as a process through
which people reduce the complexity of their environment to a level which makes
sense to them" (Sim 113). Their "rejection of old habits, traditions and conditioning,
and a merging with the culture of the new context" (Joshi 84) is an existing issue of
the postmodern trans-cultural world. For them, "home is a contradictory site of nature
and also dark" (84). It is surprising that they prefer their American present upon their
Bengali past. The new world not only "offers professional opportunity and financial
betterment," (84) but an opportunity to reconstruct their social world by obliviating
the haunted memories of the tragic past. For them immigration or displacement is a
kind of rebirth in a new culture, and the feeling of home is like something haunting
and sinister which frightens them. Their quest of survival in a trans-cultural world,
and will to sacrifice their relations for that reason is "an insight into situations of fast
changing social fabric in India" (Jain 2312). Displacement is an attempt to construct
individual reality. The new world gives the opportunity to get freedom from the old
traditions of Indian life. As, in his article "That Third Space: Interrogating the
Diasporic Paradigm", Satchidanandan argues that "the social articulation of
difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex on-going negotiation that
seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical
transformation" (53).
In The Lowland, Subhash's experience of the subaltern in Indian postcolonial
society wheedles him to raise his voice through mimicry. He leaves India in quest of
identity. He adopts the new culture as if he has always been a part of it. He does not
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want to remember his past and refuses to go back. He adopts new cultural practices,
assumptions, traditions and morals. As, a critic Catherine Belsey defines a human
being as; "not a unity, not autonomous, but a process, [is] perpetually in construction,
perpetually contradictory, perpetually open to change" (qtd. in C. Butler 53). In a new
culture he feels free of any social and ethical constraints of the old world, and the
cultural hybridity is a source of alleviation, enchantment and self transformation.
Lahiri's characters perceive America as an idealized promised land which will
cure all their wounds of the past, and fulfill their dreams and desires. Living in
America is like a new birth for them. "As the statue of liberty proclaims so
eloquently: `send me your poor huddled masses yearning to be free.' It is the nation
created as a refuge for all the world; and a nation made up of immigrants" (Sardar
16). They perceive displacement as an opportunity to start a new life on the other side
of the world by rejecting the values of the old world.
What immigrants know is that wherever their parents or grandparents
came from was nasty, brutish and tyrannical--that's why they made
their way to America. So the rest of the world by definition is
inherently flawed, unable to compare with America, and is, in a
fundamental way, not worth knowing. (Sardar 16)
The title of the novel The Lowland is also symbolic of the above statement.
The Indian land is represented as muddy low land which is reflective of colonized
Indian society. This perception of the old culture motivates them to live in a new
world with courage and determination by breaking with the barriers of past.
In the postmodern world "the self is an ever-changing and flexible entity,
especially in feminist circles, where the notion of an essentialist self is regarded as
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part of the system of patriarchal oppression" (Sim 230). So in Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction
displacement, as seen from the female perspective, is a chance to get freedom from
the patriarchal Indian values. In The Lowland Gauri, being a widow, was oppressed
by the society, and her in-laws as well. She gets freedom from the patriarchal Indian
values when she marries to Subhash, and enters into a new culture. Again, when she
leaves her husband and daughter, it is a sign that she wants to break with the barriers
of past in order to merge herself into a new world. She seeks pleasure in dislocation.
She becomes more an American in her manners and living style than a Bengali when
she crosses the national boundaries. "America, for example, began as a declaration of
identity: a new world emptied of meaningful past and ready for migrants who would
build an identity based on the power of a new territory" (Sardar 96).
In The Lowland the relationship between Subhash and Gauri is destroyed not
due to `the psychological cultural issues', as, "several diasporic novels have focused
on the failure of the marriages to indicate the failure of the immigrants to integrate
into the new life" (Joshi88). It is all due to Gauri's great desire to get rid of her past,
and to absorb the new culture for self-transformation. In The Namesake Moushumi's
denial to marry a Bengali man is an expression of her desire to get rid of traditional
authority, or a denial to accept the Indian patriarchal values. Her involvement in
American, German, Persian and Italian men indicates that she wants to take refuge in
other cultures. "The clash between traditional patriarchal Indian values, and the more
emancipated needs of the younger generation influenced by western view; the clash of
opinions between older and younger generations of immigrants is a familiar theme in
Indian fiction" (Joshi 85).
Colonialism, obviously is an enormously problematic category: it is by
definition trans-historical and unspecific, and it is used in relation to
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very different kinds of historical oppression and economic control.
Nevertheless like the term `patriarchy', which shares similar problems
in definition, the concept of colonialism ... remains crucial to a
critique of past and present power relations in world affairs. (qtd. in
Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin 170)
`Colonialism' and `Patriarchy' from the above stated explanation are similar in their
treatment of their subjects. Both cause `oppression' and `exploitation' of the
subaltern, however it seems clear from the history of popular revolts, that
"exploitation and oppression have been a perennial source of revolts" (Ludden 46).
Gauri's character in The Lowland truly represents the feminist circle in postcolonial
India where the women are doubly colonized. Their oppression by the colonizers and
Indian patriarchy inflicts them to break the barriers of traditional authority, and to take
refuge in another culture. In a new world they construct their own social network or
agency. "The notion of agency is defined as initiating an action by one's own
choice... a continuous flow of conduct or a stream of actual or contemplated casual
interventions of corporeal beings in the ongoing process of events-in-the-world" (Jain
2312).
It is through this individually constructed social world of a woman that one
can see her potential and abilities which remain hidden under the patriarchal
oppression. They create a space for themselves in a new culture or society by building
up new relations and adopting new language. As, Shobhita Jain has discussed in her
article "Women's Agency in the Context of Family Networks in Indian Diaspora" that
she knows about such women who come from rural parts of India, they usually
migrate to Australia after their marriages and try to adopt English language in
Australian accent. According to Jain this act is an indication of their repressed desire
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to mingle themselves within a new culture by communicating in the language of that
culture. By adopting the new language they actually want to construct their own
individual social world and new relationships. "Aspirations and the capacity to aspire
for a better future may be thwarted by constraints that restrict the capacity to aspire,
whereas equality of agency, which is built on equality of opportunity, has to consider
the outcome of interaction between individuals within the socio-cultural settings of
their operation" (2314). So this `desire' or `aspiration' has changed the whole
meaning of dislocation or displacement. Instead of transforming their identity they
build up a new identity in a new world which gives them an opportunity to show their
hidden talent which was suppressed by the Indian patriarchy.
Lahiri writes in an easy and simple manner, and at the same time her writing
style is autobiographical. She is not a type of author who writes a gaudy and conceited
narrative. She always chooses a simple writing style for her prose, and tells a story in
an effortless manner without using an ornate language. She likes to write in a plain
language and always tells a story succinctly. In her works there is a great impact of
the experiences of those people with whom she has a connection, like her parents,
friends, and other contacts in the Bengali communities.
My connection with India is fundamental, she said in an interview in
her publisher's Manhattan office. But at the same time it is very
slippery and confusing. It has been a cause of bewilderment and
sometimes strife and frustration within me. It's a messy thing. But it's
been a blessing for me and my writing. (Rothstein 2)
Lahiri is well known for her immigrant fiction writing. She is regarded as a
diasporic writer because she was born to an Indian immigrant family in America, and
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her experience of living in America as a child of immigrants has had a great impact
upon her writings. Lahiri's works articulate in a very subtle manner the mental
distress of the children of immigrant families who often face these traumas and
feeling of estrangement due to dislocation or displacement. Lahiri feels obliged to
recount the stories of the migrants and refugees who have a strong emotion of un-
belonging and alienation due to immigration. For precisely this reason, "scholars and
critics have dubbed her [Lahiri] a documentalist of the immigrant experience"
(Friedman 111). Lahiri's works portray a world where there is a sagacity of existence
in isolation, a failure of communication, the immigrants' powerlessness to adopt the
new changing world, complexity in social standings, and problems in sustaining the
relationships. On the whole Lahiri discusses the different experiences and intricacies
that first and second generation of Indian immigrants encounter in the United States.
Lahiri's contribution as a South Asian American / Postcolonial literary
figure, which demonstrate a range of experience, by privileging
"neither connection to nor distance from cultural roots, stressing,
instead, the distinctiveness of individual experience". (qtd. in Dhingra
and Cheung 172)
Previous research on Lahiri's fiction has been limited to the exploration of the themes
of Migration-stress and psychological trauma in result of dislocation or displacement.
It highlights the difficulties in building up new relationships and immigrants' inability
to integrate with new cultures. As;
Some studies have shown that language barriers, disconnection from
family and friends, and exposure to new and different customs and
tradition can lead to difficulties in adapting to a new country:
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Difficulties acculturating can, in turn, lead to low self esteem and
increased self doubt, with additional psychological stress. (qtd. in Joshi
85)
Marginal Value of the Study
This study is unique in its treatment of Lahiri's fiction that it looks at her
works through the lens of postmodern aesthetics. In the postmodern era there is no
fixed reality and truth, and meaning of everything has been changed, thus the
individual perception of dislocation and displacement has taken a new dimension. The
universal concept of looking at displacement as a painful and haunting experience has
been deconstructed by individual judgment and will. Moreover, individualism has
taken place of universalism; "In postmodern times, the idea that has acquired
universal connotation is individualism" (Sardar 239). In postmodern world
dislocation, according to individual perception, is not a cause of psychological
trauma, but a source of free will and ecstasy. Instead of feeling alienated and alone,
the individuals socialize in the new cultures or societies to build up a new identity.
They feel happy in a new world because it is free of the social and ethical pressures
which they face in the old world; "the universal entitlement of individualism is the
dream of personal ideal utopias, without the need to recognize constraints, boundaries,
taboos and social acceptability" (Sardar 240). So it is the existence in a new world
which provides an opportunity to the individuals to break with the barriers of past in
order to seek survival in a new world.
From the female perspective displacement or dislocation is an attempt to get
rid of old patriarchal values which oppress and exploit them. Dislocation is a form of
refuge for them in another world. The new world gives them an opportunity to
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construct their own social fabric and show their abilities which were suppressed by
the old traditions of the previous world. In Lahiri's works there is no `lurking
nostalgia' for the past traditions and relations, rather it is a great desire to give up old
world with all its fears and constraints. There is an optimistic and celebrative attitude
towards the new life in a new world. "Under the new conditions of technological
change, which opened to human perception undreamed-of areas of experience, the
ambivalence of aesthetic experience, so familiar from an old tradition, takes on a new
form" (Jauss 62).
Research Methodology
This study reviews Lahiri's fiction in the light of postmodern readings.
Postmodernism is a phenomenon very relevant to the contemporary world, especially
the colliding worlds of cultures, values and belief-systems that are central to Lahiri's
fiction. As defined in The Postmodernist Reader "Postmodern knowledge is not
simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to difference and reinforces
our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology,
but inventor's paralogy" (Drolet 124).
There are theorists who have justified postmodernism, its aesthetics, its
novelty, its originality and its propensity to do away with the idea of blind faith on
human rationality. Jean Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard are the prominent
figures who have deconstructed the idea of universalism and present the idea of
individualism. Jean Francois Lyotard, one of the key proponents of postmodernism,
devoted his writings to challenge the monopoly of large-scale philosophies and meta-
narratives. He goes on to argue that such meta-narratives cannot represent the society
because these large-scale philosophies do not have the ability to absorb the diversity
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of many little narratives which are representative of society. Moreover, as Lyotard
puts it, postmodern artists and intellectuals do not produce works according to any
pre-established criteria, nor can their works be analyzed through the lens of existing
rules. "The artist and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate
the rules of what will have been done". (qtd. in Lucy 64)
This research intends to explore how individual perception gives new
meanings to displacement, and an attempt to get freedom from the past traditions and
memories has become a negotiating issue of the contemporary world with reference to
the primary text The Lowland and the secondary text The Namesake. It is qualitative
research, and it is based on analytical understanding, textual references, literary
criticism, encyclopedic statistics, Indian history and an analysis of Jhumpa Lahiri's
mass of novels in an innovative way. This thesis will also utilize material from the
writer's autobiography, short stories, analytical columns and essays to determine her
approach towards relative issues of individuality, identity and working of male and
female agency in postcolonial and postmodern context. Moreover the researcher will
draw upon cultural and historical consciousness that is peculiar to Indian and
American hemispheres through the credible works of Lyotard who is highly praised as
the founder of postmodernism and expert analyst in the field of aestheticism.
This study is divided into five chapters. Second chapter is comprised of a
review of available literature on postmodern aesthetics, as well as Lahiri's works.
This chapter contains the reviewed articles, books, journals, interviews, definitions,
and theories dealing with the selected topic.
Third chapter explores the impact of history on the lives of individuals, and
how their experience of living as a colonial subject or as a subaltern in a postcolonial
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society impinges upon their postmodern lives. This experience fills them with anger
which invokes their desire to break with the barriers in order to get rid of traditional
authority, and how the individual perspectives construct the world in a different way.
Their angst and great desire to get rid of traditional past has changed their point of
view towards displacement. Their keen desire to mingle their personal self with a new
culture has given a new dimension to diaspora. It is also discussed how the new world
grants these individuals with freedom and independence that is the reason they
willingly embrace displacement. In that new world they enjoy their freedom without
any social and moral constraints of the old world. They build and maintain a new
identity in a new world by constructing their own social world. The new world gives
them sexual freedom as well, and at that new place they have no fears and
apprehensions of the old world.
Fourth chapter discusses the dislocation or diaspora from the feminist
perspective. It will explore how the female oppression and suppression in Indian
patriarchal society induces women to take refuge in another culture or society which
provides them the opportunity to live with freedom and dignity. This chapter is an
exploration of the female agency, working in a postmodern trans-cultural world to
build and sustain an individual identity by constructing an autonomous social world in
which females can better demonstrate their abilities and talent. The new world gives
the females an opportunity to get rid of the patriarchal oppression and domestic
confinement. In that new world they need not to carry the burden of old relations and
associations. The new world gives them the opportunity to subsist their lives
according to their own will. They construct their individual realities and reside an
improved life in a new place. This chapter also explores that how the female yearning
to get freedom from the social oppression ultimately confer them the status of an
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oppressor who regulate the lives of those who are dependent on their love and care. In
order to satisfy their inner anger and rage they get the status of an oppressor by
sacrificing their relation.
Fifth chapter provides a conclusion by summing up the entire study. It
discusses that the individual perception of constructing the world in new and multiple
ways has become an existing issue of the contemporary era. In present scenario
cultural hybridity has become a source of pleasure and solace. People find comfort
and security in dislocation or displacement. This concluding chapter explores that
how the individual desire to break with the barriers of past in order to get rid of the
traditional authority and oppression has become a pertinent issue of our own
contemporary society. In the present scenario the people of South Asian countries,
sick of violence, bloodshed and oppression of their own society, willingly opt to
immigrate. In order to get rid of griminess of their social worlds they happily take
refuge in European and American countries, as they perceive these new worlds
secure, independent, and full of opportunities and happiness.
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Chapter 2
Literature Review
Reviewing Lahiri's works through the lens of Postmodern Aesthetics is
complex to say the least, as there have been few studies to date that explore her fiction
using this approach. There have been many studies that focus on the themes of
migration-stress, psychological-cultural issues in her works, and the way Lahiri
attempts to write about the effects of displacement, sense of alienation, and the
immigrants' inability to amalgamate within new culture. However, very few studies
have actually attempted to work out the way Lahiri describes the individual
experience and perception to look at displacement in a positive light. Lahiri explores
the way how colonial experience of individuals has changed their way to look at the
world in a postmodern context.
In the Routledge Companion to Postmodernism Stuart Sim has described
postmodernism as deconstruction of modernist principles. A fundamental thought of
the intellectual movement of postmodernism is its elimination of an "ultimate truth or
grand narrative" (109). Furthermore, postmodernism shores up the idea that the future
is not predictable. It is fickle and always receptive of human influence, and
postmodernism castoffs the postulation that meta-narrative has the potential to contain
all knowledge and meaning. "Postmodernism also rejects the notion of the existence
of a social world which awaits discovery and argues that it is merely what society
perceives it to be" (109). Postmodern thought has given way to innovative methods of
conceptualization by challenging some of the more traditional and stiff "modern
epistemologies" (110). Postmodernism puts across the idea that there is no fixed
meaning or reality, meaning is ephemeral and transient. It is always in a flux and
therefore has no solidity or substance. Instead, meaning is achieved through the use of
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language within human interactions. "The world can only be perceived through the
forms created by a shared language, and the difference in meaning from one language
to another reflects a difference in a perception of the world" (111). In postmodernism
storytelling is an approach which is able to restrain a plurality of "voices and realities"
(111).
Niall Lucy, in his book Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction has
drawn a parallel between romanticism and postmodernism. According to him
romanticism is defined as "the production of something entirely new", while on the
other hand postmodernism is defined in terms of "working without rules in order to
formulate the rules of what will have been done" (64). Lyotard is one of the key
proponents of postmodernism who has devoted his writings to challenging the
domination of extensive viewpoint or meta-narratives. According to Lyotard `little
narratives' have the capacity to represent society, and `meta-narratives' are incapable
of holding that multiplicity of many `little narratives'. For all that Lyotard is "on the
side of difference and diversity" (Lucy 71). He promotes the necessity of responding
to every phrase or language-game in its own stipulations, according to its own rules
and statements, in order to prevent the `injustice' of an appropriate response, his
"insistence on the ethical nature of heterogeneity turns out to be indistinguishable
from the sort of statements he regards as totalizing and therefore unethical or unjust"
(71). In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard offers a definition of postmodernism.
According to Lyotard, postmodern is the `unpresentable' aspect of modern
presentation; that is to say the postmodern defies definition and refuses to be clothed
in `good forms' (Lucy 63). As Lyotard sees it, the postmodern has, unlike the modern,
an abhorrence for the collective nostalgia of the `unattainable'. The postmodern
condition then is constantly on the lookout for new ideas that symbolize the
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aforementioned `unpresentable' aspect of the modern. For Lyotard the postmodern
artist or writer holds a status of a philosopher. His/her work can be judged and
interpreted in multiple ways. It cannot be determined or be judged by pre-established
rules and conventions. The artist and the writer then work without predetermined
rules (qtd. in Lucy 63-64). Aesthetics are at the apex of postmodern theory in
contemporary times. In his book, Nail Lucy has put forward Baudrillard's argument
that "we live everywhere already in an `esthetic' hallucination of reality. The old
slogan `truth' is stranger than fiction,' that still corresponded to the surrealist phase of
this estheticization of life, is obsolete" (53). The postmodern world is truly dependent
on individual experience and perception having no ultimate truth and reality, "reality
has become unreal" (53). It is a relationship between different people which construct
their truth and reality. According to Baudrillard, "today it is quotidian reality in its
entirety--political, social, historical and economic--that from now on incorporates
the simulatory dimension of hyperrealism" (53). The perception of the world is not
dependent on observation, but on the experiences of relationships between people. For
Baudrillard "there is no more fiction that life could possibly confront, it is reality
itself that disappears utterly in the game of reality" (53).
In Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutic, Hans Robert Jauss has
mentioned that under the new circumstances of technical transformation, which open
up to human perception "undreamed-of areas of experience, the ambivalence of
aesthetic experience, so familiar from an old tradition, takes a new form" (62).
Nonetheless, it is most easily discovered in the medium of aesthetic experience that
"we can still find out about the past and the historical change of human sensory
perception" (64). The chronological transformation in "the receptive aesthetic
experience" will be elucidated by a number of textual analyses (63). "This
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hermeneutic function of aesthesis is due to the fact that the human glance is interested
by its very nature. It is not satisfied with what directly presents itself, is lured by what
is absent, and reaches out for what is still hidden" (64). Aesthetic perception animates
this vigor of the glance, sublimates the desire to see and be seen to a "poetics of the
glance," and thus continues the process that "led artistic aesthesis from discovery to
discovery" (64). The `aesthetic attitude' organizes or strengthens an individual to
form a model according to his/her own perception and experience rather than just
adopting a model which is set by religion, convention, or culture (93). Aesthetic
experience does not come into being as an isolated entity. On the contrary, it is
imbued with meaning by a host of different experiences that can be complimentary or
competing. As a result, the aesthetic experience celebrates the commonplace and the
extraordinary alike, a phenomenon that ultimately results in the aesthetic experience
becoming richer and more significant itself (112). Jauss has talked about John
Dewey's view that a pioneering achievement in the field of aesthetic experience is the
aesthetic familiarity that is the foundation of all elevated purposes which are
necessary in the progress of human life, and the circle of life, "basically experienced
as a constant fluctuation in the interaction with the environment, acquires an
`aesthetic quality' with the moment of recovered unity" (112). With the introduction
of the concept of aesthetic function, the seemingly unbiased purposes of aesthetic
quality are seen as flowing from human activity. "The work of art loses its character
as thing; as `aesthetic object,' it requires the human consciousness to constitute it.
Being a dynamic principle, the aesthetic function is potentially unlimited: it can
accompany every human act, and every object can manifest it," (115) and its limit lies
in the fact that it originates from the dialectical repudiation of a sensible, useful and
communicative function. And because "the phenomena it produces in the constant
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renewal of the aesthetic experience are subject to social judgment, i.e., must find
public recognition before they can enter the tradition-creating process as aesthetic
norms" (116).
In Jean Francois Lyotard: Aesthetics, it is illustrated that the aesthetic of the
sublime and of the experimental that Lyotard sketches in The Postmodern Condition
and attendant articles is precisely an attempt to situate art as the field of resistance to
meta-languages. Lyotard appeals to the aesthetics in order to change our perception
towards "cultural transformation". For him aesthetic is the site of discovery and
innovation where desire works freely without any "rules of truth". The important
thing now in aesthetic is the "kind of invention of which art is capable". This is a kind
of development which displaces the rule of truth, instead of originating the new "truer
truths" (Taylor, Lambert 224). "If early modern aesthetic innovation sought a new
truth to the experience of telling, postmodern art does not seek a truth at all but seeks
to testify to an event to which no truth can be assigned, that cannot be made the object
of a conceptual representation" (226). The aesthetics of postmodernity assert that "the
art-work" has the status and ability to displace "both the historical assurance of
classicism and the historical adventure of modernism". "If classicism offers a
description of the concept that would not itself be an event, whereas modernism offers
to represent the concept of the event, postmodernism seeks to testify to the event
without recourse to the concept that would reduce its event hood to unity and fixity"
(226). Lyotard persists that justice should not be reliant on truth. It must have
independent status, and judgment should not follow any fixed criteria. "Narrative
pragmatics differentiates narratives without grounds because they do not refer
narratives to either referential truth or the truth of a just model of narrative. The
analysis of narrative is a matter of performance, not of truth. Nor is this a criterion of
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performance in the sense of maximum efficiency" (229). Lyotard's interest in Kant is
precisely for the way in which the Third Critique sketches the terms of indeterminate
or reflective Judgment in ethics or in terms of the aesthetics of sublime (230).
In Jean Francois Lyotard: Politics and history of philosophy, Scott Lash
argues that the groundwork for a postmodern aesthetics as a "figural regime of
signification" is provided by the distinction between discourse and figure. According
to Lash, the modern sensibility is mainly rational that privileges "words over images,
sense over nonsense, meaning over non-meaning, reason over the irrational, and the
ego over id". The postmodern sensibility on the other hand, is figural, and it privileges
"a visual over a literal sensibility, figure over concept, sensation over meaning, and
immediacy over more mediated intellectual modes" (275). Lash suggests that "Susan
Sontag's `new sensibility' and championing of an `aesthetics of sensation' over an
`aesthetics of interpretation' anticipates a postmodern aesthetics which can be
conceptually grounded through Lyotard's distinction between discourse and figure"
(275). Victor E. Taylor and Gregg Lambert have mentioned that Lyotard follows Kant
in his argument that the fields of theoretical, practical, and aesthetic judgment have
their own independence, policies and standard. "In this way, he rejects notions of
universalist and foundationalist theory, as well as claims that no one method or set of
concepts has privileged status in such disparate domains as philosophy, social theory,
or aesthetics" (247). Lyotard insists that in any case justice will be an issue of a
"provisional judgment" which does not allow a generalization of universal rules or
principles (261).
In Theory after `Theory', Cary Wolfe has talked about Rorty's concept of truth
and justification. For Rorty the only condition which is applied to the word "true" is
"justification," and justification is always interrelated to an audience. "So it is also
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relative to an audience's lights--the purposes that such an audience wants served and
the situation in which it finds itself". So in this way the question "Do our practices of
justification lead to truth?" is unanswerable as well as unrealistic or nonsense (Elliot,
Attridge 39). Rorty further argues that "one should not raise the question...of whether
there are things in the world which make algebraic and moral truths, or aesthetic
judgments, true" because there are reasons to believe things , and reasons to maintain
a change in that beliefs, but at the same time there are no grounds for the "truth of
beliefs" (41). According to Rorty, people's beliefs and values are in a constant state of
evolution, change and interaction, much as the neural synapses in their bodies are
continuously interacting with each other sparking electrical charges. A human `self'
then does not have within itself `beliefs and desires', but is simply a `network' of
them, much like the human brain does not have such synapses, but is simply a
network of the synapses (41).
In the same book by Elliot and Attridge, a critic Linda M.G. Zerilli explains
that for Arendt, political judgments and aesthetic judgments have the same structure.
For him, "both political claims and aesthetic claims are practices of reflective
judgment, that is, a form of judgment according to which, in contrast to what Kant
called a determinative judgment, the rule is not given" (122). In Arendt's views,
"wherever people judge the things of the world that are common to them, there is
more implied in their judgments than these things" (123). Arendt asserts that the
meaning is not specified to the nature of things, the formation of the world or the
impartiality of the history, rather it is a creation of significant relations which
engender our wisdom of the reality and moreover, meaning is revealed through our
judgment. "Reality is different from, and more than, the totality of facts and events,
which, anyhow, is unascertainable'. Meaning is what we produce when we judge the
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objects of the common world apart from their function or utility or necessity" (129).
While talking about the logical truth, Arendt says that "it is the only reliable `truth'
human beings can fall back upon once they have lost the mutual guarantee, the
common sense, men need in order to experience and live and know their way in a
common world". But this "truth is empty or rather no truth at all, because it does not
reveal anything that is not already given in the premises" (129). Arendt writes that in
order to discover similarity in multiplicity our receptivity seems to need imagination,
and this imagination is also an aid to knowledge. "As such, it is the condition of all
knowledge: the [in Kant's words] `synthesis of imagination prior to appreciation, is
the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, especially of experience" (127). In
Theory after `Theory', according to Beiner, reflective judgment means focusing on
the unique aspects of the `particular' and the `particular within particular', rather than
accumulating all such `particulars' under some common umbrella or "universal
formula" (122). Ardent refers to the process of judgment as "attending to the
particular as an end in itself", something that is not forfeit to a universal cause (122).
In
Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology by Naill Lucy, Jean Francois
Lyotard in his essay "Something Like: `Communication...without Communication'"
talks about aesthetic reception and judgment of taste. He says it is not possible to say
that a feeling must congregate the approval of everyone without negotiation or,
"without presupposing a sort of community of feeling such that every one of the
individuals, placed before the same situation, the same work, can at least dispose of
an identical judgment without elaborating it conceptually". While analyzing the
aesthetic feeling, "there is thus also an issue of the analysis of what goes on with a
community in general, in the reception of works of art, what is involved is the status
of sentimental, aesthetic community, one certainly `anterior' to all communication
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and all pragmatics" (60). The feeling is instant convivial of what is given (61).
According to Lyotard, regarding the trepidation of form the aesthetic feeling is
divided into two categories: "the feeling of the beautiful and the feeling of the
sublime". He argues that the aesthetic of sublime, whose logic is introduced by Kant,
is "without any sort of justification, contrary to rule, has the interesting property of
including no immediate communicability". The feeling of the sublime becomes
discernible in the absence of free forms, and it is attuned with the form-less. "It is
even when the imagination which presents forms finds itself lacking that such a
feeling appears. And this latter must go via the mediation of an Idea of reason which
is the idea of freedom" (62). While talking about the uncertainty between passable
and passive, Lyotard argues that these two problems are different and passivity is not
opposed to possibility as it opposes the activity. "Even further, this active/passive is
opposition presupposes possibility and at any rate is not what matters in the reception
of works of art. The demand for an activity or `interactivity' instead proves that there
should be more intervention and that we are through with aesthetic feeling" (65). In
present circumstances Lyotard disdains the idea of finding sentimentality in the
slightest sketch by a Cezanne or a Degas, it is rather that one who receives should not
receive, "it is that s/he does not let him/herself be put out, it is his/her self constitution
as active subject in relation to what is addressed to him/her: let him/her reconstitute
himself immediately and identify himself or herself as someone who intervenes. What
we live by and judge by is exactly this will to action" (65).
Lahiri's fiction throws light on the above discussion in a subtle manner. The
individual perceptions of the world, the construction of reality in multiple ways, and
the workings of desires and agency in postmodern arena, are beautifully delineated in
Lahiri's fiction. Lahiri's novels talk about the individuals' aesthetic feelings and
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receptivity towards displacement. The functioning of desires in order to build a new
identity in a new place, and a yearning to change the old traditions and values.
It is quoted in Naming Jhumpa Lahiri: Canons and Controversies that it is
quite easy to tag Lahiri's stories as another modification of immigrant fiction,
combining relative themes of cultural hybridity and up rootedness "in a crowded
intellectual mart with their genre café", but at the same time "the universality of her
themes and emotions they conjure up lift them to a much larger dimension of human
experience of finding kinship and beauty in unexpected places". In other words, these
stories, which disdain the attraction of being anything other than stories well told,
"could be located anywhere and speak not just to those who are familiar with the
culturally schizophrenic world of immigrants" (Dhingra and Cheung 9). In their
introduction Lavina Dhingra and Floyed Cheung describe that Lahiri's stories do not
transmit a "radical or transformative political edge",...on the other hand they express
with dignity, gracefulness and feeling, the numerous and different problems of
"rooting/rerouting" from one family to another, from one culture to another, and the
difficulties of concurrently "retaining and forming communities" (xxi). It is quoted in
Naming Jhumpa Lahiri: Canons and Controversies that "In Lahiri's novel, The
Namesake, shuttling between three worlds ---born in Britain, raised in Rhode Island
and taken on long visits to India---has made Lahiri all too aware of "intense pressure
to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new" (12). Lahiri's
"sensitivity to the nuances of first-generation experience is also exemplary in her
awareness that immigration itself---ostensibly (but not always) a choice---augurs the
existential condition of inhabiting a terrain over which the immigrant lacks control"
(9). Conceivably The Namesake is successful because it beautifully and thoughtfully
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highlights both "universal dimension of human experience and late twentieth-century
post-colonial and Asia- American politics" (30).
In Between History and Identity: Reading the Authentic in South Asian
Diasporic Literature and Community, Tamara Ayesha Bhalla has quoted the views of
Ranjan and Sharma about Lahiri's abilities as a diasporic fiction writer. According to
them, "In the realm of South Asian diasporic fiction published in the U.S., on one
author can currently lay as much claim to the imprimatur of renewal and reinvention
as Jhumpa Lahiri," and moreover, "Lahiri has been championed in the international
critical arena as the quintessential `new cosmopolitan,' purveyor of an `ethno-global
vision,' interpreter of `immigrant angst,' and creator of a `different type of expatriate
writing' whose work goes `beyond labels' such as `ethnic' or `diasporic'" (181).
Bhalla argues, in her book that critics extol Lahiri for her "revision to common
representations of traditional Indian culture that they identify in South Asian diasporic
narratives" (181). In this way, comparisons between Lahiri and her predecessors, such
as Bharati Mukharjee and Salman Rushdie, most effectively comment her status as a
new, progressive, and innovative South Asian writer (182). While talking about The
Namesake, Bhalla describes that the romantic relationships in The Namesake,
particularly the failed marriage, presents a "powerful critique of South Asian cultural
insularity; as Maira explains issues of inter and intra racial romance in the South
Asian American community mask politics of displacement and desires for belonging"
(208). Bhalla illustrates that Meera shares her views about The Namesake. Meera said
Lahiri's novel;
articulates [...] this identity crises that does exist for I think the
majority of South Asians that I know [...] It's coming to terms with the
world that you live in, and the household that you grew up in, and you
