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5฀ Mimics without Menace: Interrogating Hybridity in Bharati Mukherjee's Fiction Rebecca Sultana Bharati Mukherjee' s attemp t t o becom e a n America n write r play s a significant par t i n securin g he r plac e i n th e America n literar y cano n (Mukherjee 1992: xv). Writing about this acculturation process, Mukherjee says: "I have learned tha t in this era of massive diaspori c movements , honorable survival requires resilience, curiosity, and compassion, a letting go o f rigi d ideal s abou t th e purit y o f inherite d culture " (1997 : 30). Mukherjee, therefore , distinguishe s between tw o kind s o f immigrant s in terms of their assimilatio n into the Western metropolitan center an d according t o thei r resistanc e t o adaptatio n o r assimilatio n int o suc h culture. Mukherjee' s characters , diaspori c o r not , appropriat e th e metropolitan cultur e by replicatin g an d becoming hybridized o r wha t Homi Bhabha terms "authorized versions of otherness" (1994: 88). In the colonial context, hybridity involves "a dialectical relationship between European ontology and epistemology and the impulse to create or recreate independent local identity" (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffinl989 : 95). In postcolonial societies, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin(1989:95) se e hybridity occurrin g a s a resul t o f th e "consciou s affiliatio n o f th e indigenous people s wit h th e ne w socia l pattern s a s define d b y th e colonizers or when settler-invaders force the indigenous to assimilate to their ways." Bhabha (1994: 88) describes hybridity as a near duplicatio n that produces a reform by appropriating the "Other. " 96฀Rebecca ฀Sultana฀ I wil l discus s Mukherjee' s firs t nove l The Tiger's Daughter a s foreshadowing th e subsequent development of the writer's conceptio n of hybridity . He r characters ' colonia l education , class , an d economi c positions facilitat e thei r hybridization int o a Western culture, yet thei r social construction, as shaped by hybridity, subvert the concept's positive objectives as defined by Bhabha . The Tiger's Daughter describe s Calcutta-bor n Tar a Banerje e Cartwright, wh o i s educate d i n th e U S and marrie d t o a n American , David Cartwright. Tara returns to India after seven years to find the city of her childhoo d altere d beyon d recognition . Against th e backdrop o f the riot-torn city, Tara once again establishes contact with her old friends, all members of Calcutta's Westernized upper class. In the idle chatter of these youn g people, in their melodramati c reference s t o the "trouble d times," she notices a frightening naivety . Being educated at progressive institutions in the West, Tara alone seems to possess a deep understanding of the remorseless processes changing their world. In a rewriting of th e patriarchal imperialist discourse that had cas t the white man as savior, Mukherjee's novel brings the educated, emancipated Indian woman back from th e West a s th e onl y remainin g symbo l o f cultura l progres s i n a moribund, tradition-boun d societ y and , therefore , a s th e possibl e redeemer of the East. Tara, too, is drawn into the effete, indolent climate and can neither communicate her knowledge nor effect positive change. Such ineffectiveness als o becomes the text's ideological judgment on the political climate of the 1970s , in which Tara can see only the end o f al l order and the onset of total anarchy. The societ y t o whic h Tar a return s preserve s trace s o f Calcutta' s colonial aristocrati c culture . Tara' s childhoo d hom e stil l display s th e eclectic meeting o f tw o worlds , from th e Italia n table s i n the entranc e halls and the tiger skin decorating one wall, the heavy imported furnitur e in the living room, and the deep canvas chairs on the balcony, reflectin g "the order an d eas e of the British days," up to the marble prayer roo m on the third floor where the array of Hindu gods and goddesses are the objects o f Tara' s mother' s constan t preoccupatio n...

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