Towards and Across Third Cultures: South Asian American Transnationalisms and Rhizomatic Subjectivities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Oeuvre

Physically and/or figuratively, Bengali American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s hybrid protagonists transcend national borders and form dynamic subjectivities that resist simplified assumptions about transnational migration. However, while some characters like to either accentuate their ancestral South Asian heritage or endorse their assimilation to the United States, others rejoice in embracing third cultures or embarking on unexpected journeys without fixed points, thereby questioning the restrictive container of the nation-state as the dominant category for examining society. Sustained by Homi K. Bhabha’s and Stuart Hall’s theoretical approaches to cultural identity and influenced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizomatic thinking, I will focus on Lahiri’s autobiography and her fiction in English that portrays characters who, overexerted by the constraints of the two cultures wanting to claim them, find refuge in a third culture or defy the nation-state completely by considering themselves citizens of the world, or nomads.