Hybridity and Simulated Identity: Mimicry and Cultural Fascination in the Diasporic Space as Simulacrum in Mehrnoush Mazarei’s Short Story "Sangam"

The present study concerns the analysis of the reality and functionality of an identity that is based on diasporic space. The analysis tends to elaborate on the location of hybrid identity in a diasporic space, with a reliance on a comparative reading of Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum in the particular case of Mehrnoush Mazarei’s short story, "Sangam". From a formal perspective, "Sangam" is a compilation of chronology and autobiography; the content denotes the narration of a one-year span of the life of the narrator, a migrant Iranian woman, her memories of acquaintance and friendship with an Indian woman in a minor diasporic society of United States. Employing what results from the dialogue between Bhabha’s hybridity and Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum, and with an applied reference to the form of the narrative and also the narrator’s characterization, the analysis undertaken here illumines how the identity of the narrator, even if harvested and developed as hybrid, is a simulation; a simulation that she herself builds via gazing at the other, cultural fascination and mimicry; activities which in certain ways enables her to absorb the Indian woman’s identity. Furthermore, in the course of these actions and as their consequences, there emerge different layers of repetition and imitation which reduplicate and reinforce the differing nature and the layers of simulation, in a way that all the possible signification of hybridity can disintegrate.