Hybrid Identities Of Post-colonial Subjects

V.S. Naipaul, born and grew up in Trinidad as an Indian Brahman descendant and then studied and lived in Britain for many years, is one of the most famous post-colonial writers as well as a talented Nobel Prize winner. Based on his complicated background and life experiences, Naipaul’s work examined various sensitive and complex modern themes like global migration, ethnic differences, political and religious identity, the development of the third world countries, the cultural identification and identity construction during post-colonial era, etc., among which identity is one of the main research fields of Naipaul and his works. His best-known work Miguel street and the most powerful novel A Bend in the River describe the local conditions and customs and the society of post-colonial countries, and also discuss the common identity confusion and cultural strategies of the post-colonial subjects.Based on the post-colonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha’s Hybrid theory and combined with the two works and the writer’s life experiences, this thesis explores how Naipaul weaves his real experiences and identity confusion into his prolific writings, and interprets his own cultural anxiety through the characters and plots in the books. From the perspective of Bhabha’s theory, the relation of the colonizer and the colonized is no longer binary, but complicated, dynamic and interdependent. The strategies used by the colonized are various and complicated instead of simple and categorical. In the end, both Naipaul and his fictional characters use different cultural strategies and construct multiple, complex and dynamic cultural identities.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is a general introduction to Naipaul’s life experiences and the characteristics of his works. A brief introduction to Homi K. Bhabha’s Hybrid theory is also delivered. The second chapter illustrates Naipaul’s multiple cultural background and the resulted identity anxiety. The third chapter analyzes the hybrid culture and the characters’ identity anxiety in the light of Bhabha’s hybrid theory, and points out the connections to Naipaul. The background of Miguel Street and A Bend in the River correspond to Naipaul’s childhood and his trip to Africa respectively, thus the characters in the two works bears many similarities to the writer. The fourth chapter states the dynamic strategies used by Naipaul and his characters, and how they deconstruct the colonial authority and construct hybrid identities in the hybrid cultural context. Lastly the fifth chapter is the conclusion and comment on Naipaul’s hybrid identity construction and Bhabha’s hybrid theory.