A Diasporic Criticism On Naipaul's Works

V.S.Naipaul is known as a post-colonial writer with rather complicated cultural identities.He was descended from the Indian but born and raised in Trinidad with a rich Indian culture in his family.Later,he became a subject of the Great Britain after his four-year-study in Cambridge University.These special experiences characterize Naipaul's multi-cultural background.In his late life,Naipaul still travels around the world and has produced many works.He hopes to find his spiritual belonging and ideal home by means of diaspora.This idea is well reflected in his works like A Bend in the River,Half Life and Magic Steeds.Theses works relate the sense of cultural alienation,identity confusion as well as the identity seeking process of the exiles in diaspora like the two protagonists Salim and Willie.This thesis aims to explore the identity pursuing process of the diaspora through the analysis of Naipaul's works coupled with the theories of diaspora criticism.Besides,the diaspora complex of Naipaul will be revealed through the life journey of the two protagonists Salim and Willie.In the view of the post-colonialist Said,though they suffer the cultural alienation both from the national culture as well as the foreign culture,the diaspora are provided with the double perspectives so that they can observe things from different perspectives.According to Hall,the diaspora starts to display their agency so as to pursue themselves after experiencing the identity anxiety caused by cultural alienation.This kind of diaspora identity is not unchangeable but unfinished and productive.It's characterized by its hybridity.It's a kind of hybrid identity,which is updated constantly.The post-colonialist Bhabha puts forward the idea of The Third Space.It holds that the diaspora can build a hybrid identity in this spiritual space.In this space,various cultures can communicate and integrate so that the diaspora can reconstruct themselves and build a new culture identity and get rid of their present confused life state.Like Naipaul,Salim and Willie are also the offspring of the Indian.They both choose to escape from their birthplace to see the outside world in order to find a spiritual home by the way of diaspora.They object to the native culture and long for the foreign culture.During their diaspora,they remain the state of marginality brought by the cultural alienation,which make them feel lost in this process and cannot find the right directions in life.So they try to go beyond their complicated cultural background and construct their hybrid identities in the Third Space to find their ideal home.The paper contains five chapters.The first chapter will firstly introduce Naipaul and his A Bend in the River,Hala Life and Magic Seeds briefly.Then,the literature review concerned these works will be discussed.Besides,the related theories of diaspora will be explained in this chapter.Finally,this chapter will give a general introduction of Naipaul's diaspora experience and writing.The second chapter will explore diaspora's sense of cultural alienation in these works,which includes alienation in native cultures and alienation in foreign cultures.The third chapter deals with diaspora's identity exploration in Naipaul's works.Various ways of identity seeking by diaspora in these three works will be explored,such as foreign journeys as initiative self-reconstruction,making friends to build his own circle,self-emancipation in sexuality identity seeking in ceaseless wandering.The fourth chapter discusses the self-construction completed in the Third space.The two protagonists,self-reconstruction coupled with the theory of Third Space put forward by Homi K.Bhabha will be explored respectively here.The fifth chapter will give a conclusion to the thesis.