A QUEST FOR EQUIPOISE VIs-A-VIS CULTURE CRISIS: BAPSI SIDHW A AND THE CONTEMPORARY EMERGENT LITERATURES IN THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

The United States is a site, In the literary wor ld , for contesting cultures due to the immigrant writers whose spirit of qu est pulled them to this land away from their roots . Pakistani-American Parsi novelist Bapsi Sidhwa's quest began much before she emigrated in 1983. She is cognizant of the pain of being caught between cu ltur es and issues of cultural hybridity but her Parsi psyche forbids her to acknowledge biological hybridity. Using psychoanalytical theory as a frame of reference, this study seeks to prove that Sidhwa's narratives stand fixated at metonymic phantasmagoria of sex uali zed co nt exts without l ett ing h e r CO I 0 I co 0 al al ' y 0 a a S 1 yb . b ca S Zoroastrian faith mixIng of physical and spiritual genes IS considered a cardinal SID. Hybridity and related issues are a throbbing pulse in the veIns of emergent lit eratures. It is argued In this study that Sidhwa acknowledges the communal changes in a social structure of Parsi faith but does not create new subjects within the changed social contexts: such as a Parsi hybrid. This inhibition obstructs her narrative's passage from the Imaginary to Symbolic: the discourse of a new identity ID the emergent literatures of the United States. This study suggests that Sidhwa's narrative-subject must extricate itself from that umbilical cord of the Parsi ideology by admitting a Parsi hybrid in order to situate itself in the Symbolic of the emergent literatures.