Living through Precarity: A Butlerian Study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland

• Authors: Alireza Farahbakhsh , Peyman Hoseini

Abstracts

EN

This article aims to explore Judith Butler’s concept of precarity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland. The questions this study seeks to find answers to are: What are the various manifestations of Butler’s notion of precarity in The Lowland? And to what extent does the Butlerian sense of agency allow the main characters of The Lowland the possi- bility of overcoming precarity? This research shows how enforced dispossession, which is a product of globally-imposed precarity, incites violence and leads to the involuntary migration of the subjects. In addition, it is revealed that precarity plays a segregative role in escalating religious and tribal conflicts in the post-Partition India. More importantly, in the final analysis, this study suggests that Butler’s reiterative sense of agency fails to account for the normative dynamics of precarity which is at work in the diasporic context of The Lowland.

Keywords

EN

precarity; dispossession; reiterative agency; Judith Butler; Jhumpa Lahiri; The Lowland

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2021
• Issue: 30(1)
• Pages: 153-170

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Alireza Farahbakhsh

author

Peyman Hoseini

Identifiers

DOI

10.7311/0860-5734.30.1.10

Biblioteka Nauki

2049074