2026-10-07T07:50:17Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34049820 2026-10-01T17:57:00Z category_25714 item_type_8 month_year_10_2026

negotiating the interstices @ a materialist re-appraisal of hybridity and home in Selvon, Levy, Adiche and Lahiri Delzetha Edith Sinclair (22380286) Other creative arts and writing not elsewhere classified agency and communion HOME VISITATION Male Female migration alters <p dir="ltr">This paper investigates how diasporic literature destabilizes the binary between homeland and host society, presenting migrant identity not as an unchanging origin to be recovered but as an ongoing process of negotiation. Through a comparative analysis of Sam Selvon’s <i>The Lonely Londoners</i>, Andrea Levy’s <i>Small Island</i>, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s <i>Americanah</i>, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s <i>The Namesake</i>, the study examines how cultural expectations collide with the socio-racial, linguistic, economic, and generational realities of host societies. Drawing upon Stuart Hall’s conceptualization of cultural identity as “becoming” and Homi Bhabha’s theories of hybridity and the “Third Space,” the analysis identifies four recurring points of collision: imperial fantasies and lived realities, language and accent as markers of belonging, institutionalized racial exclusion, and the psychological difficulty of an unmediated return “home.” These theoretical perspectives are placed in conversation with materialist critiques advanced by Benita Parry, Aijaz Ahmad, and Neil Lazarus, whose work draws attention to the structural conditions within which cultural negotiation occurs. The paper argues that hybridity may provide a language for negotiating difference, but access to its potentially liberating possibilities is materially unequal. Class position, racialization, employment, housing, institutional power, and historical circumstance shape the degree to which migrants can exercise cultural and social agency. Through the four novels, belonging therefore emerges neither as a fixed territorial status nor as a readily available cosmopolitan freedom, but as a contested and continually reconstructed process shaped by memory, struggle, adaptation, and transgenerational change.</p> 2026-10-01T17:57:00Z Text Thesis 10.6084/m9.figshare.34049820.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/negotiating_the_interstices_a_materialist_re-appraisal_of_hybridity_and_home_in_Selvon_Levy_Adiche_and_Lahiri/34049820 CC BY 4.0