Alteration of Euro-Centric Modernity in Jasmine

Abstract

This research, fashioned after Bharati Mukherjee’s fictional work, Jasmine, is an endeavor to explore the challenge posed by the female protagonist against euro-centric modernity. However, the dissymmetrical power structures are really explored by Mukherjee in Jasmine, which assists us from seeing the novel as an act of alternative modernity. She has sketched more general traits, thus opening up the discussion on multiculturalism. With these general traits she has stumbled on essentialisms, really thinking through difference and identity, and criticized existing categories that are appealing and comprehensible to the West. She has created an alternative representation of agency and pleasure, but sometimes the subject consents to hegemonic representations of transnational and multicultural reality. Mukherjee has explored this consent as a two-sided alteration/infection. Furthermore, by following the path of consent to hegemonic structure, she has made her minority text extremely successful, thus opening the discussion on subaltern migrant identity to a wider audience and stimulating further representations.