FRAGMENTED SELVES AND DISLOCATED IDENTITIES: A POSTMODERN STUDY OF KAMILA SHAMSIE’S HOME FIRE

Abstract

This paper endeavors to investigate fragmented selves and dislocated identities in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire from a postmodern prospective. The study uses prominent ideas like the incredulity towards metanarratives by Lyotard, deconstruction by Derrida as well as the theory of simulacra by Baudrillard in analyzing how Shamsie has deconstructed the concept of identity, nationhood and belonging in a post-9/11 transnational environment. The narrative form of the novel, which is characterized by multiple points of view, time dislocation, and the use of intertextual references to Antigone, is examined to provide the insight into the mental, cultural, and political fragmentation of the characters of diasporic Muslims. Home Fire signifies postmodernist aesthetics in the study which argues that identity has become fluid, unstable and influenced by surveillance, migration and ideological conflict. This research highlights the importance of postmodern fiction in voicing out marginalized/hybrid subjectivities because it is based on the internal conflict and external alienation of individuals who struggled to find their place in British and Pakistani socio-political spheres.

Keywords: Postmodernism, dislocated identity, fragmented self, diaspora, hybridity