The Diasporic Culture And Narrative Strategy In Miguel Street

V.S.Naipaul is a typical diasporic writer in postcolonial period. Miguel Street,a collection of 17 short stories,embodies the characteristics of his diasporic writing."Diaspora" is a recent category of thinking.In its Greek origin,the word "diaspora" means the dispersal or scattering of pollens or seeds.Now it has gained several new connotations,including transnationalism,cultural translation,traveling culture and hybridity.With the concept of diaspora becoming more and more widely understood and accepted,Miguel Street can be included with a new appreciation that Naipaul,a diasporic writer,helps enhance the transnational and transcultural hybridity in Trinidad.Naipaul vividly depicts the diasporic culture and life of the people in Miguel Street with his humorous and perceptive narrative.This book won him the Somerset Maugham Award in 1961 and established his fame as "a portrayer of street life"(Press Release).The thesis mainly discusses the diasporic culture and narrative strategies in Miguel Street.Chapter One explores the reasons why Naipaul is a diasporic writer and the characteristics of his diasporic writing.Naipaul's multicultural backgrounds have great influence upon his writing.He goes beyond the singularities of identities and perspectives and focuses on the articulation of cultural differences.He enhances a transnational and transcultural perspective in writing.Chapter Two analyzes the diasporic culture in Miguel Street.The people of Miguel Street come from a variety of races,nationalities,religions and cultures. They combine to create a hybrid culture.They are consigned to the margin in the colonial society.Naipaul represents their diasporic forms: unhomeliness,loss of identity and desire for recognition and self-realization.Chapter Three examines the narrative strategies in Miguel Street.The polyrhythmic narrative(focusing on multivocality,but not in the real sense of Bakhtinian multivocality)is used to play one voice off another,allow different perspectives to coexist,to juxtapose characters with different status or different history in pursuit of representing the hybrid culture in Trinidad.The stories are told from double perspectives: the experiencing "I"—the boy narrator and the narrating "I"—the adult narrator.The complementing perspectives vividly represent the comedy and tragedy of the marginal existence of the people of Miguel Street. Various places of indeterminacy are designed to function as events and link the narration and help to establish distinctive characters of the persons in the text.The effects of irony are utilized to criticize the politics, education and religion and show the disparities between people's ambition and realization,between appearance and reality,producing the tragicomic effect of the text.From the diasporic perspective,Naipaul follows the transnationalist perspective.He is against the calcified identity and stresses the transcultural hybrid identity.The hybrid culture in Trinidad which is created in the practice of cultural exchange and cultural translation is richly diasporic,bearing cosmopolitan and international qualities. Naipaul adopts an objective attitude towards the people of Miguel Street. He shows both sympathy and irony for them,not romanticizing them.To study the culture and history of Trinidad from the diasporic perspective, we can learn more and understand better the spirituality of the people in Miguel Street.They have diasporic forms,such as unhomeliness,loss of identity and desire for recognition and self-realization.They are marginalized in the colonial society.But they defy and challenge the center and focus on the articulation of cultural differences.Naipaul speaks on behalf of the marginalized and compels us to see the presence of suppressed histories.Thus,he has begun to deconstruct the traditional notions of the center and seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation.From the diasporic perspective,we can experience Naipaul's transnational and transcultural aesthetics and the force of his cultural judgment.Besides double perspectives,polyrhythmic narrative,places of indeterminacy and effects of irony are analyzed in the thesis.The analysis of these narrative strategies is very helpful for the study of Naipaul's other works.