Theme Of Identity In Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette

The Oxford dictionary defines identity as “The characteristics of determining who or what a person or thing is”. The Hebrew word “Galut”, “initially referred to the setting of colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile”, when translated into Greek leads us to the etymology of the term “diaspora”, based on “speiro” (to sow) and the preposition “dia (over)” and in Ancient Greece it referred to “colonization” and “migration.” (Shuval, 2003) Thus, diaspora refers to the shifting of the population from its aboriginal homeland which may be either forced or involuntary as in case of the Africans for slave trade or voluntary emigration in search of work or better living conditions. Martin Bauman says: “the idea of diaspora has …show more content…
The paper would begin by introducing the ideas and theories that exist around the notion of identity in Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette, examining them and carrying them forward to show how success or failure in case of a “diasporic” identity may depend upon their ability to adapt themselves to the environment/space they migrate …show more content…
The communal identity always disguises individual aberrations and differences. Also, representation of Omar’s “national” or “ethnic identity” as a process of negotiation of its different components may be interpreted in the light of Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “third space” as a new position that emerges from the interaction of two or more “original moments” whose histories are simultaneously displaced and traceable in the subject’s different “identifications” (Rutherford 1990b: