The Language of Diaspora: Marginal Rebellion and the Deconstruction of Central Narratives in Modern English Literature (Published)
Postcolonial and diasporic writers have been involved in challenging the canonical structures of modern English literature and the inherited frameworks of these writings in their discourses. By drawing on the concepts of hybridity and the third space of Homi Bhabha and on the deconstructive strategies of Jacques Derrida this paper explores how in their attempt to overcome the hegemony of the centers of imperial rule the marginalized writings of today’s postcolonial and diasporic cultures reject the binary structures of center/margin, self/other and homeland/ exile and in their linguistically hybrid texts present a counter-hegemonic attitude towards these structures and attempt to overcome them in their representations of self, other and home. After introducing Homi Bhabha’s notions of hybridity and the third space of literature and Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive strategy in modern English literature, the paper will concentrate on three different linguistic features of the subversive rhetoric in the diasporic texts of today. By analyzing code-switching as counter-hegemonic strategy by illustrating syntactic re-appropriation and by undoing linear structures of time in order to create a totally new form of narrative the article ends by arguing that diasporic literature today actually re-marks the English and in doing so opens up new possibilities for literary works within a given national literature to challenge the dominant cultural narratives and create a new, more fluid and polyphonic space of literature.
Keywords: Hegemony, Hybridity, deconstruction, diasporic literature, linguistic rebellion, modern English literature, postcolonial criticism