Imageries of the fragmented nation(s) in Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay

Abstract

Based on Benedict Anderson’s (1982) understanding of the nation as an "imagined community", in dialogue with Homi Bhabha's (1990) theorizing of the nation, this study seeks to investigate how Anita Desai employed different textual and performative strategies (Bhabha) to represent the fragmented nation(s) in the novel Baumgartner's Bombay (1988). Desai represented the nation under the tension - stated by Bhabha - between the pedagogical and the performative forces that compose it. I am particularly interested in Desai's exploration of individual and collective experiences of the Second World War and the Partition, respectively in Germany and in India. As a fragment of the nation(s), Hugo, the diasporic subject, has a proper imagery to represent his hybrid condition as indicated by Stuart Hall (2007).