Hoda Shabrang; Bahare Tajik
Abstract
IntroductionNowadays, speaking about immigration and its consequences is a controversial topic of many academic groups. The rise of postcolonialism and immigration has led to indescribable changes in world public affairs. In the field of immigration studies, the individual experiences of women in the ...
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IntroductionNowadays, speaking about immigration and its consequences is a controversial topic of many academic groups. The rise of postcolonialism and immigration has led to indescribable changes in world public affairs. In the field of immigration studies, the individual experiences of women in the diaspora are not significantly considered as the dominant experiences of immigrant men who are still claimed to represent all immigrants. Thus, it can become challenging to examine female migration experiences and it consequences which are ignored and overlooked. For this reason the eminent novel of Mohsin Hamid, Exit West, is chosen. This article carefully examines the consequences of assimilation of female characters in the hybridized Space.Background of the StudyAlthough assimilation to the host cultures in hybridized spaces situates migrant women in impossible situation or inbetween, the transformation of the migrant women’s identities can also become a tool to deconstruct stereotypes of third world women and patriarchal hegemonic discourse. In Exit West the main character, Nadia, is presented as the migrant woman with hybridized identity. The migrant woman is not obliged to choose between two identities, particularly between the cultural identity of the country where she comes from and that where she finds herself. In other words, both identities can co-exist in the same person, dialoguing and promoting cultural understanding. In this way immigrant woman in hybridized space is empowered to move freely between cultures and establish a sense of home and belonging even in her new places. These ideas of identity transformation and identity creation are very evident in Nadia at Exit West, portrayed as a key example of an immigrant woman whose identity is influenced by the places and cultures she encounters around the world. She feels like “vermin” at first in the host culture yet she turns to a beautiful butterfly at the end of the story.MethodologyThe present article explores the ignored parts of female experiences as subalterns in migration and it focuses on the process of their assimilation in the host countries in accordance with the Gayatri Spivak’s theories. Her intention to illustrate that the level where the subaltern could be heard or read cannot be reached because what is said is either ignored, forgotten or it simply disappears from the official, male-centered historical. As the migrant woman’s identity transforms from “somebody” to “nobody”, she further more hopelessly agonizes as she also turns from a former member of a society to someone who is just “the Other”. This predicament of otherness is a universal reality among migrant women as they do not only experience it from people whose nationalities are different from them but also from men with whom they share similar race or background.ConclusionThe idea that female migrants consider their identities as multiple or fluid is a key theme in literary representations of the female migrant experiences in the novel, Exit West. The key point to consider is that such representations of the experience of the migrant woman underlines how this shift in identity does not only come in the form of a physical alteration of her body and geographical crossing of borders but, more so, in her symbolical and psychological being. Despite the number of challenging experiences for migrant women in Exit West, it does overall emphasizes on the positive impact of such migration experiences. In fact, migration is also depicted as an opportunity that opens doors for the migrant woman to be exposed to a multicultural life and to improve her quality of life.
Zahra Taheri
Abstract
This article focuses on the notions of panopticism and post-panopticism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) through the perspective of left thinkers. Using Foucault’s and Lyon’s views, the writer tries to discuss how the exit of the migrants from the panoptic, disciplinary communities ...
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This article focuses on the notions of panopticism and post-panopticism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) through the perspective of left thinkers. Using Foucault’s and Lyon’s views, the writer tries to discuss how the exit of the migrants from the panoptic, disciplinary communities of theirs to the so-called democratic West can prove a failure. Focusing on an unknown, Islamic country as well as the western cradles of civilization—Greece, Britain, and America—Hamid, in fact, tries to clarify how the disciplinary community of the orient has much in common with the post-global West. The only difference is a shift from a panoptican discourse to that of a post-panoptican one. To this end, the notions of “camp,” “sorting paradigm” and “bio-politics” are to be discussed. It is argued that despite the blurring of the borders through the post-global capitalism, the West seems to have restored the old imperialist ethos in the form of the anti-racist racism through the practice of “geofencing” and “geoslavery.” However, the hybridity that migration results in can pave the way for the emergence of a space of heterogeneity, herterotopeia, in the West which is in constant process of “becoming.” As a result a new sense of belonging and, thus, identity on the part of the ethnic other is formed and the notion of nativeness and the concept of the home are challenged so much so that the imigrant would be able to “make a home” wherever he is regardless of his roots