From Postcolonialism To Cosmopolitanism The Progressive Quest In V.S. Naipaul’s Major Works

Much has been written about Naipaul’s travel and fictional works and hispostcolonial identities, but few as yet has dealt with Naipaul’s progressive quest foridentity and imaginary home on frameworks from postcolonialism tocosmopolitanism, which parallels Naipaul’s dynamic vision on the developing world.Postcolonialism emerged in the1970s and attained its established place in the1990s.It looks at the paradoxical state of the third world’s ethnic cultural psychology causedby the historical reality of colonial domination, including identity uncertainty, tensionbetween locality and the West and sense of temporality. The contemporary sense ofcosmopolitanism first entered into the mainstream with Martha Nussbaum’sredefinition of it in The Boston Review in1994, which ensures diversity limitlesspossibilities.For Naipaul, as well as his protagonists, identity and home are problems theyhave to face and make choices. Based on a close reading of Naipaul’s major fictionsand non-fictions from his early, middle and late periods：A House for Mr. Biswas，TheIndia Trilogy， and Magic Seeds, this dissertation explores the journey of apostcolonial subject searching for identity, cultural roots and imaginary home andanalyzes the transition of Naipaul’s perspective from postcolonialism tocosmopolitanism. It argues the postcolonial subjects’ identification is constructedfrom escaping, floating and hybridizing to becoming, from being homeless toattaining an imaginary home in an era of globalization, and discloses the referentialsignificance of Naipaul’s major works to the present issues of immigrant identity.This dissertation comprises three chapters between an introduction and aconclusion. The introduction provides a general review of commentaries on Naipauland his writings, points out that few writers have as many acclaimers as well asdisclaimers for their works. Disputes around Naipaul the person and his works are notliterary phenomenon alone, but part of the consequence of the prevailingdecolonization movement and the process of globalization. It traces the evolution ofthe concepts of identity, displacement and homelessness, provides a critical review and builds up the basic theoretical framework and arguments of this study.Chapter One is a study of Naipaul’s early masterpiece A House for Mr. Biswaswith Lacan’s theory. It focuses on Naipaul’s dramatization of the failure of uprootedcultures to survive in an alien environment and a doubly marginalized man’s struggleto resist communal and colonial pressures and to give meanings to his existence andexplores the postcolonial predicament of Trinidadians. This chapter also draws outthat the colony can’t provide the postcolonial subjects with independent identity. Thehouse on Sikkim Street Mr. Biswas finally achieves embodies a paradox by which“achievement and failure are aspects of a single experience typical of a world which isshot through with contradictions”(White,1975:99).Chapter Two is on Naipaul’s Indian Trilogy from the perspective of Orientalism,an important theory of Postcolonialism. His persistent spirit of pursuing cultural rootsand discovering more about himself has been sublimated. Here he is hoping to find atradition of continuity and a sense of wholeness of existence which he feels lacking inthe fragmented Trinidad society. After examining India in an overall and thoroughway, he comes to understand India and then becomes sympathetic, concerned aboutIndia and at last live with it in a gradual and orderly process. An Area of Darknessviews Indians as an uncivilized and barbaric lot, who merely adhere to the philosophyof the bush; India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) complicates epistemologicalbackwardness, as Naipaul sees it, with psychic disability; India: A Million MutiniesNow constitutes a radical departure from or retreat from his earlier representations.This book depicts a society full of changes and mutinies, from which Naipaul seemsto see the hope of India. It is a feeling sort of approbation but not identification.Chapter Three is a study on Magic Seeds，which witnesses the process ofNaipaul’s development from a postcolonialist to a cosmopolitan. Early in The Enigmaof Arrival, Naipaul narrates the change of perspective in his mind that the tranquil lifein the British countryside eases his soul and he is beginning to heal and more thanheal. The changing world vision reveals his cosmopolitanism in his works in the newcentury. Cosmopolitanism demonstrates that the relationship between the local andthe global, the universal and the provincial, the home and the world are mutually constitutive rather than merely opposite. The protagonist of Magic Seeds, Willie, is agood representative of Naipaul, for him, the experience of Diasporas not only meanstrauma and loss, but also the gains of possibility. They have more than one history,home and identity. But all in all, Naipaul fashions for himself and Willie Englishrather than postcolonial and he is willing to be so.The concluding chapter briefly summarizes the pursuing route of postcolonialsubject’s identification and imaginary homeland. The final conclusion is that throughwriting, Naipaul progresses towards his meditation on the world, and finally assertshis identity and imaginary homeland. This dissertation also exemplifies that readingliterary works may provide a method for people to have a deeper understanding of theworld reality with updated perspectives. Another central point of this study is to showhow beyond cultural specificity and national contemplation, cosmopolitan narrativesare interlinked in mapping the global order critically from multiple points of referencein our globalized times.