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Cultural Identity and Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake
Cultural Identity and Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake in the light of Stuart Hall's
essay on "Cultural Identity and Diaspora". Hall begins his essay saying that identity is not as
transparent or unproblematic as we think it to be and this paper aims to show how the
discovery of one's identity is indeed an intricate process, one that is always necessarily
complex. When an individual straddles the boundaries of two cultures, as does Gogol
Ganguli, the protagonist of The Namesake, the task becomes even more complex and
problematic, being grounded in issues of memory, tradition, and family expectations.
Throughout the novel, we see that Gogol remains captive to his conflicted identity _ is he
Indian or American?- although there is the merest hint at the novel's end that he may choose
one identity over the other. His trajectory suggests that, for the second generation Indian_
American at least, refusing to choose one identity over the other, which might mean complete
renunciation of either Indian_ness or American_ness, troubles one's negotiation of identity.
Whereas Gogol's mother, Ashima, as a first generation Indian_American, is able to negotiate a
hyphenated subjectivity because she has an original identity as a starting point, Gogol is
'always_already' in crisis due to his birth on 'foreign' soil. This paper throws light on how
Lahiri uses Gogol's name to show the duality of immigrant experience and thus explain what
Hall meant by diaspora experience when he said that, "diaspora experience is defined by …
the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity, by a conception of 'identity' which
lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity."
This paper is an attempt to read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake in the light of
Stuart Hall's essay on "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." Hall begins his essay saying
that identity is not as transparent and unproblematic as we think it to be. Instead of
thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, we should think of it as a
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The issues of names and identity are presented at the beginning of The
Namesake. As Ashima's (Gogol's mother) water breaks, she calls out to Ashoke,
her husband. However, she does not use his name because this would not be
proper. According to Ashima, calling one's husband by his name is "not the type
of thing Bengali wives do… a husband's name is something intimate and
therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over" (Lahiri, 2). From this statement we are
shown how important privacy is to Bengali families. Bengali children are given
two names: one is "daknam", that is, pet name, used only by family and close
friends, and the other is "bhalonam" that is used by the rest of the society. At
birth, Gogol is given a pet name as his official name because his official name,
sent in a letter from his great grandmother in India, gets lost in the mail. Upon
entering kindergarten, Gogol is told by his family that he is to be called Nikhil,
his "bhalonam", by teachers and the other children at school. Gogol rejects his
proper name and wants to be called Gogol by society as well as his family. This
decision made on the first day of kindergarten school causes him years of distress
as it was also his first attempt to reject a dual identity.
The Namesake records the plight of Gogol's desperate attempt to change his
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Thus as Nikhil, he becomes a part of the mainstream, and not at all a hyphenated
American. On the surface, he lives a life that is not that different from those of
his fellow American students, yet the name Gogol still has a hold over him. He
dreads his visit home and his return to a life where he is known as Gogol. Gogol
is not just a name to him; it signifies all his discomfort to fit into two different
cultures as he grew up. Being away from home at college makes it easy for Gogol
to live as Nikhil in American society. He does so happily for many years,
detaching himself from his roots and his family as much as possible.
Chanchala K. Naik quotes Kellner as saying that "one can choose and
make, and then remake one's identity as fashion and life possibilities change and
expand" (qtd. in Chanchala K. Naik, " The Identity and The Social Self"). But by
choosing and remaking one's identity as Gogol did, one is always anxious about
the recognition and validation of that identity by others. After remaking himself
as Nikhil, Gogol relishes the moments when he encounters people who have
never known him as Gogol. The irony, of course, is that the reader, as well as the
novelist herself, have invested too much in the significance of his name and can
seldom think of him as anyone but Gogol. In other words, the readers as well as
the novelist fail to recognize him as Nikhil. Moreover, he reasons that by
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changing his name from Gogol to Nikhil, he can shed some cumbersome
ties to the past. What Gogol does not realize is that his pet name, Gogol, is more
than simply the product of his father's obsession with the Russian author Nikolai
Gogol. He is named Gogol, rather, in memory of a train accident in which his
father nearly lost his life. Throughout most of his childhood and early adult years
Gogol experiences little intimacy with his father and his traditional ways, and
perceives his father's name choice to be the greatest burden he must bear. When
Gogol's father finally explains the significance of his name to Gogol, it becomes a
way of bridging the gap between father and son, as well as his lack of
identification with his Bengali heritage:
Gogol knows nothing of his namesake except what he learns in high school: the
Russian writer was a famously "'eccentric genius', who was reputed to be a
hypochondriac and a deeply paranoid, frustrated man" (Lahiri, 91). It's hardly the
image an adolescent boy would warm to. Gogol hates that "his name is both absurd
and obscure, that it has nothing to do with who he is, that it is neither Indian nor
American but of all things Russian" (Lahiri, 76). Learning about the train accident
that set Ashoke on the road to America does not change Gogol's feelings about his
name; instead, the name shoulders too much of the burden of the family hopes and
wishes, and it adds to the exasperating process of assimilation.
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Lahiri uses Gogol's name to, literally and figuratively, represent the ways in
which his cultural heritage severs him from the social sphere, forcing a gap between
him and his American friends, and serving as a constant reminder of the depth of
this disparity. He already knows that his Indian heritage sets him apart from his
schoolmates, and that his inner turmoil is evident from a young age. He tries
desperately to distance himself from being Indian. He would rather not be forced
to attend the weekly gatherings of Bengalis, and would rather not visit his relatives
in India. He would rather attend art classes than Bengali lessons and he would
rather listen to Beatles than his father's classical Indian music. Being the child of
immigrants Gogol begins in a kind of nowhere place. He is firmly of America, but
is not quite an American, in part because he is not recognized as such by others.
For much of his life, Gogol has difficulty understanding where he is from or who
he is. He is often unhappy because it is difficult for him to reconcile the different
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cultures, countries, and people that define him. For Gogol, the universal
difficulties of adolescence are compounded because he is the son of first generation
immigrants. As he enters his teenage years, he begins to resent his Bengali heritage.
He begins to address his parents in English, while they speak to him in Bengali.
Gogol wants to adapt to American values and life concepts, which are firmly
resisted at home. He cannot understand why his parents disapprove of his romantic
relationships with American girls; he cannot understand why his parents do not
accept his American girlfriends as their parents accept him; he dislikes his parents
when he compares them with the parents of his American girlfriends. When Gogol
is involved with Ruth, his parents refuse to give him money to fly to England
where she has gone for a semester. Afterwards, when he gets involved with Maxine,
he sees Maxine's parents, Gerald and Lydia, as stark contrast to his parents. Gogol
distances himself from his parents and starts living in New York, away from his
parents. He avoids going home on weekends, excusing himself on the false pretext
of work and spends his time with Maxine and her parents with whom he feels
"none of the exasperation he feels with his own parents. No sense of obligation"
(Lahiri, 138). He thinks of the terms of his parents' arranged marriage as
"something at once unthinkable and remarkable." When he goes on a vacation
with Maxine and her parents "he feels no nostalgia for the vacation he's spent with
his parents." Gogol's desire to spend more and more time with Maxine and her
family shows his desperate attempt to mimic and assimilate:
He learns to love the food she and her parents eat, the polenta and
risotto, the bouillabaisse and osso buco, the meat baked in parchment
paper. He comes to expect the weight of their flatware in his hands, and
to keep the cloth napkin, still partially folded, on his lap. He learns that
one does not grate Parmesan cheese over pasta dishes containing
seafood. …He learns to anticipate, every evening, the sound of a cork
emerging from a fresh bottle of wine (Lahiri, 137).
Gogol's act of appreciating and eating meals with the Maxine's family serve as an
act of assimilation. When Gogol makes American culture a part of himself, for
example, by making its cuisine his own, he can no longer identify himself as
separate from it. As Gogol partakes of these high-class, expensive meals, they
become part of him and he becomes part of them. He is both assimilating and
assimilated. Through his mimicry1, the unfamiliar becomes familiar as he tries to
adapt to their culinary tastes and practices as his own. His mimicry of these habits
gains him a place in the privileged sphere. However, his assimilation is not a very
comfortable act for Gogol. As Homi K. Bhabha has put it, mimicry "emerges as
the representation of a difference that is itself a disavowal" (Bhabha, qtd. in The
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Location of Culture, 1994: 86.). This disavowal via mimicry is illustrated when
Lahiri writes that, "(Gogol) is conscious of the fact that his immersion in Maxine's
family is a betrayal of his own" (Lahiri, 141). Gogol's moving away from his
parents and seeking a life separate from theirs might be interpreted as an exercise
in cultural displacement: he did not want to go home on weekends, or to go with
them to pujos and Bengali parties, or to remain unquestionably in their world.
Gogol struggles with the pain of being a second generation Indian American. He
also has to cope with his unusual name and his parents' inability to break away
from their origins. Like most Americans, he leaves home for university because he
finds his parents and their life in Cambridge suffocating. He has affairs without
their knowledge. He lives a life of isolation and alienation because he does not
share his parent's past and their connections with India. Jhumpa Lahiri has thus
brought out the sense of displacement, rootlessness, alienation and non-belonging
that often besiege members of diasporic communities in her exploration of the
relationships between non-resident Indian characters.
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Notes
1 In his essay, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse," Homi K. Bhabha explains mimicry to be "almost the same
but not quite" (86).
2 The Namesake was made into a film and was released in the United States,
Canada, the United Kingdom and India in March 2006. Director Mira
Nair briefly introduced the film by saying that it was her most personal
project as she herself lived in Kolkata for 12 years and then in New Yorsk
City for 25, the two cities that the characters in the film travel between as
well). She dedicated the film to the legendary directors Ritwick Ghatak
and Satyajit Ray. In the words of the film's screenwriter, Sooni
Taraporevala, "The Namesake is a family portrait that reveals individual
lives, which separate and then merge as they are carried towards their
destinies." (The Namesake: Film Review by Subhamoy Das).
Works Cited
Armstrong, Paul B. "Being 'Out of Place': Edward Said and the Contradiction of
Cultural Difference". 19 March 2006.
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Baral, Kailash C and Prafullah C, Kar, eds. Identities. Local and Global. Delhi:
Peneraft International, 2003.
"Bi-Cultural Experience of America". 19 March 2006.
<http://educationworldonline.net/eduworld/
php?choice=prev_art&article_id=140&issueid=19>
Frazer, Liz. "The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri". 19 March 2006.
<http://www.book-club.co.nz/books03/11namesake.htm>
Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora". Colonial Discourse and Post-
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Prentice Hall, 1993.
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