Imperialism, Hybrid Self And The Third Space In Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist (2002)

Abstract

Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist (2002) provides us a different way of looking at the relationship between the colonized and the colonized in the context of British imperialism in India. The writer satires the myth of cultural absolutism by presenting a character, Pran Nath, a bastard child of casteless Englishman and expounds the theme of miscegenation. Narrative of displacement is also a part of the colonial reality of British India. The effect of Pran Nath’s cruel eviction from his first home ruptures him and it problematizes the articulation of his individual and collective self. Kunzru puts the protagonist in the middle of Empire itself with a false identity of a real Britisher beyond hybridity model and the colonizer-colonized binary but he still has problems which demands exorcism of European spirit.