Reframing Diaspora: A Post-Colonial Reading of Women`s Travel Narratives

Abstract

Diaspora studies currently engage with contemporary globalization and migrant experiences in Western metropoles. Diaspora writing, however, has a long history rooted in the colonial archive. My aim is to analyze the impact of diaspora on colonial women`s travels using a post-colonial approach. This paper will focus on the narratives of both Indian and British women including Emily Eden (Up the Country, 1866), Anne Wilson (Letter from India, 1911), Krishnabhabini Das (Englanday Bangamahila, 1885) and Janaki Majumdar (A Family History, 1935) to analyze the impact of diaspora on gender identity. Both groups underwent psychic trauma and fracturing of identities when they were transplanted to alien environments. Drawing on Homi Bhabha`s theory of hybridity, I interpret the recurrence of hybridization, trauma of maternal loss, and yearning for home as representations of diasporic consciousness in the two groups of women. I extend the parameters of diaspora studies by incorporating the writing of Western women and by shifting the gaze to the historical archive of colonial writing. My analysis will reframe diaspora studies and reorient current notions of whose experiences count as diaspora.