| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 97 === An astounding novel revolving around metamorphosis, aberration, and dislocation, The Satanic Verses goes deep into the diasporic experience of self-positioning, torment, adaptation, and resistance in a kaleidoscopic and contingent postmodern world. It sharply delineates the predicaments pungently experienced by diasporic subjects, including the adverse residential environment, diaspora’s nostalgic attempt to grasp the distant past of homeland, and the ambivalent yearning to transform themselves “from the sojourners to settlers” (Barker 204). Besides, the text deals with how diasporic subjects appropriate and subvert the established norms of the imperial center. In consequence, the complicated issue of the diasporic identity turns out to be the underlying cornerstone in this thesis. The major concern of this thesis is to explore the entire novel principally from three angles: the diasporic experience in a world of disintegration and mutability, hybridity as an inevitable phenomenon, and the diasporic appropriation of the heterogeneous space.
Chapter II is divided into two parts: the postmodern and diaspora. This chapter aims not only to explain that transience and fragmentation—the salient features of postmodernity—usher in a new age without foundation but also to explore the diasporic experience and the identity crisis confronted by diasporic subjects in the postmodern era. In Chapter III, the ineluctable phenomenon of hybridity and its latent capability to dismantle the authority of the West are meticulously scrutinized. Underscoring the untranslatability among diverse cultures, cultural hybridity transcends the inflexibility, stubbornness, and impenetrability of an either-or situation and brings to light the possibilities of a neither-nor situation. By the same token, the power of linguistic hybridity—a phenomenon taking place in the process of trans-territorial crossing—is also highlighted in The Satanic Verses. In Chapter IV, the concept of space in The Satanic Verses is meticulously investigated from two aspects: the heterogeneous nature of space and spatial appropriation by diasporic subjects. The indeterminate, mutable, discontinuous, and heterogeneous nature of space is closely related to the agency of diasporic subjects. With underground tactics and guerilla attack, diasporic subjects are able to alter the configuration of space, to search out their own space, and to create their own spatial stories. By means of delving into these three aspects, this thesis explores the agency of diasporic subjects to take advantage of their unsteady position and to open up endless possibilities.
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