“The Happiness Was Almost Heavy”: Fractured Subjectivity and Postcolonial Diasporic Identity in Akhil Sharma’s Family Life

This paper argues that postcolonial first-generation diasporic children hold a distinct, but underrepresented position within diaspora studies that has been systematically overlooked by the existing scholarship. Through a reading of Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (2014), it examines the narrator, Ajay Mishra’s struggle for identity formation by drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorization on subjectivity, while challenging Homi Bhabha’s celebration of hybridity and the Third Space, both of which popularly empower postcolonial immigrants. Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s concept of oppression, the article contends that the intersecting forces of class, race, diasporic status, colonial history, and familial tragedy can produce a unique form of oppression that ultimately hinders Ajay’s process of identity formation during childhood, and prevents him from articulating his subjectivity even as an adult. Additionally, by utilizing Sigmund Freud’s notion of melancholia, extended through Vijay Mishra’s conceptualization of the “impossible mourning,” the paper further posits that, unlike adult migrants, for whom memories of the homeland often function as a source of resilience to negotiate the hostile attitude of the host country, first-generation immigrant children like Ajay are denied of a stable past that could cushion them against the hardships of diaspora. Consequently, the absence of nostalgia transforms into diasporic melancholia, resulting in a fragmented sense of self. The paper thereby demonstrates how various faces of oppression, limited agency, and lack of a pre-migratory subjective identity can alter the process of identity formation within a postcolonial diasporic condition. Spectrum, Volume 19, June 2024: 83-97