Negotiation of Un/Belongingness between the “(Imagined) Homelands” from a Transnational, South Asian, Brown Woman’s Perspective: A Case Study of Taslima Nasreen’s French Lover.

Abstract

“Border” beyond its geographical logic becomes a topic of discussion in the transnational studies from the late twentieth century which challenges the established notion of the nation-state. The rhetoric of border as Anzaldúa (1987) calls “borderlands” and “Nueva Conciencia Mestiza” allow transnational feminists to enter into the new discourse to re-think the terms such as nation, homeland and border in a transnational writing.  Fundamentally using the transnational and feminist approach, the paper will look into the negotiation of un/belongingness of a South Asian, transnational brown woman between the  “imagined homelands” through a fictional novel French Lover (2002) written by Taslima Nasreen. In this piece of study, the term “imagined homeland” is an experiment but at the same time, it explains the meaning of the space which this term tries to explain. These “imagined homelands” are not merely spatial homelands which could be a land of origin or land of residence. These homelands are metaphorically constructed on the ideology of the collective groups in a “borderless” and “post-national” world. The paper will critically examine the construction of different “imagined homelands” calling them, global feminist group and brown community in this case study, and the negotiation of a south Asian transnational brown woman between these "imagined homelands.”