Cultural Transduction in Zafar’s Identity: A Study of Zia H. Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know

Abstract

This study explores how Zia Haider Rahman’s protagonist Zafar in In the Light of What We Know (2014) becomes culturally transduced distancing him from the native culture in the aura of cultural imperialism. The study further investigates how the contemporary national and global realities created by capitalism and their cultural and political manifestations shape the conceptual model of this study. The theory of proximity and cultural transduction is applied to analyze the selected work. Furthermore, I employed Bourdieusian notion of reflexive research practice to inform my methodological choices and analysis. Besides analyzing the hegemonic schema of global capitalists in some other cultures, the study also shows how globalization creates an impression of smallness and diminishes cultural differences, forcing the South Asian diasporas to immerse in host culture. There seems to have been a general cultural turn that entails a greater emphasis on the personal self. My findings show that the global capitalist projects of transculturation and transnationalism have shaped the mélange identities of the South Asian subjects making them culturally transduced.