Postcolonial Legacies: Migration, Identity, and Belonging in Modern English Novels

Abstract

The present research study undertakes a critical examination. In the context, it attempts to provide an in‑depth analysis that has been observed in the literary representation of postcolonial identity within modern English novels. The primary focus of this attention is, therefore on migration and the ensuing crisis of belonging in the works of contemporary Pakistani and Pakistani‑diasporic authors. However, the study challenges explanatory reliance on monolithic cultural or geopolitical categorizations. It has moreover attempted to address a central paradox in relation to the co‑existence of a deeply rooted historical trauma and a dynamically evolving, aspirational transnational subjectivity. The study in the context undertakes a systematic assessment of the internal narrative and discursive pathologies that fracture identity formation from within. The analysis, therefore, is grounded in a theoretical synthesis. This synthesis would help integrate the concept of the ‘Hybrid Subject’ postulated from ‘Postcolonial Theory’ with a diagnostic framework of ‘Internal Narrative Pathologies’. The synthesized framework helps locate the representational failure of the postcolonial self. The failure is rather not in cultural or historical absence but in representational paralysis. This paralysis has been generated by the subject’s own sophisticated interstitial positionality. The framework, therefore, urges that the efficacy of the narrative Subject has been in‑fact undermined by a synergistic interaction between ‘historical haunting’ and ‘discursive overload’.

The study finding reveals an inherent structural contradiction. The contradiction observed in fact exists within the conception of the “Postcolonial Subject” itself. Pakistani Anglophone fiction, in the context has been operating a sophisticated discursive apparatus. This narrative apparatus is specifically reflected in its sustained engagement with themes of Partition, diaspora, and global scrutiny. However, the operationalization of this apparatus would essentially remain inert. In the context, this has particularly been observed at several critical juncture(s). The immobilization is in‑fact rooted in the “Representational Rigor Paradox”. Though narrative complexity and theoretical sophistication have denoted a mature literary tradition; however, the protagonist’s sense of coherent self‑hood has remained fragile. The study, furthermore, has identified an accelerating “jurisdictional cacophony” of identity. The historical devolution of the self, followed by the enactment of transnational migration, has virtually created a blurred and contested psychic space. The division has evidently fragmented the national subject into several competing narrative silo(s). It therefore, allows the monolithic ‘Global Discourse’ to exploit not only inter‑cultural divisions but also the procedural technicalities of belonging. The exploitation terra‑transforms the domestic subject’s psychic space into a safe sanctuary that is unintentionally engineered by historical legacy and narrative design.

Keywords: Pakistani Anglophone Fiction, Postcolonial Identity, Migration, Hybridity, Partition, Diaspora, Narrative Pathology, Historical Haunting, Discursive Overload, Representational Rigor Paradox