Representation of Liminality and Hybridity in Moyez.G. Vassanji’s

Abstract

This study examines the representation of diasporic experiences of East African Asians as depicted in M.G Vassanji’s novel The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003), a fictionalized autobiography in which the protagonist’s life as part of an immigrant society in a new land is central. It analyses how these experiences are reflected in individuals and their society. The study analyses the in-betweenness or liminality of the Indian settler explicit in the identity of the protagonist Vikram Lall. The study also examines the effects of cultural hybridity and ambivalence as ‘diaspora compromise’ in the novel and the gendered extents of hybridity through the acts of gender stereotyping in the novel. This study is premised on the idea that the diasporic experience of the East African Asian community has an influence on the characters in order to produce hybrids. It is essentially hinged on Homi Bhabha’s ‘Third Space’ theory as the framework for examining the diasporic experience of the society in question. Homi Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity, in-betweenness and third space are useful in understanding the Asian characters in the novel under study who are wedged between two phases of cultural existence and yet do not embrace visibly distinct positions within their social system and therefore feel marginalized and excluded, without identity. This research is a literary one and its primary methodology relies upon a social constructivist paradigm which proceeds through several stages including identification of the appropriate texts both primary and secondary and the formulation of a theoretical construct against which the texts are read and reread. The study hopes to contribute to the concept of diaspora especially in contemporary time and to the ‘Asian question’ in the context of Africa. The study establishes that The In-Between World of Vikram Lall reveals an enduring elucidation of Asian African individualities. The identities of the Asians in the novel are positioned in-between the black and white identities replicating the multi-ethnic nature of the society in question. This in- betweenness, whether imaginary or existent, is the position of cultural contradiction that is the hall-mark of its occupiers. The characters negotiate their identity and belonging in a liminal space of multiple histories and cultures. The Asian characters in their eagerness to uphold their traditional principles and customs, progressively absorb the customs of the Africans. The immigrant characters thus cultivate an in- between identity whereby the migrants preserve their ethnic culture, while accommodating and connecting to the host culture, consequently functioning in a liminal space between the host and indigenous culture. The discussion in this study offers insights into the condition of being Asian but experiencing grander link with Africa. The story told in the novel under study supports fluid and already diverse identities in means that evade the easy categorisations of Asians, African or Europeans. East African Asians can embrace singular and manifold identities but their choices are partly personal.