The State that Un-Homes You: Coercive Hybridity, Compulsed Diaspora, and the Literary Chronicle of Failed Citizenship in Pakistan and South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70670/sra.v4i1.2645Abstract
This research article introduces and interprets theoretical analysis of coercive hybridity to delve into the dynamics of post-colonial nations that do not merely lodge diaspora but actually manufacture it through citizenship regimes. There are much of obtained scholarly works that see diaspora hybridity and diaspora through the perspectives of resistance and innovative contestation. That includes Bhabha's theory of hybridity (1994) and Hall's theory of diaspora (1990). This paper argues that such celebratory readings can portray subject matter but also bypass the violence of the State. In countries like Pakistan and South Africa hybridity is not something chosen by the cosmopolitan elite but is inflicted on marginalized people who are legally inside the country but symbolically outside the nation. This paper calls this situation a domestic un-belonging. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this paper argues and conducts a comparative analysis of two different nations: Pakistan and South Africa, despite being different nations with distinctive trajectories cultures shares the same feelings of being diasporic. In Pakistan there is different historical trajectories and theological stances whereas in South Africa is racial nationalism; two different nations with complete different ideologies and viewpoints share the same pronouncement of un-belonging. The analysis is grounded in close readings of co-existing Anglophone novels by Mohsin Hamid (2007, 2017), Kamila Shamsie (2017), J.M. Coetzee (1999), Nadine Gordimer (2001), Damon Galgut (2021), and Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021), in conjunction with constitutional and political histories. The paper concludes by proposing a 4 stage model of coercive hybridity.
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