Chapter 4 - The Insufficiency of Paradigms

Summary

This chapter tracks the ways in which migration has shaped the South Asian novel. It provides an overview of key writers and novels from South Asia and the "new" diaspora to understand the possibilities and limitations inherent in diaspora as a critical category. Diaspora, as a paradigm, often risks anti-historical or de-historicized readings of literary texts and their deep engagements with history. One may often risk attention to form when diaspora becomes the analytic rubric for the study of the vast body of anglophone South Asian literature. The chapter concentrates on novels that circulate among scholars and readers in the United States, United Kingdom, and to some extent Canada, and concludes by gesturing to what gets left out when diaspora becomes the reigning paradigm for understanding the long and deep history of South Asian literature in English.