Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy” and the Ethical Mapping of Subjectivity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11271869 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christopher Apap (Oakland University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 55-75 |
| Publication date | 2016-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlw001 |
| OpenAlex | W2333149161 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, “Sexy,” has been understood as a meditation on postcolonial desire since it was published as a part of her acclaimed debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999). This paper does not aim to destabilize postcolonial readings of the widely anthologized story but instead to argue that Lahiri’s story of an ill-fated affair between Miranda, a naïve white Midwestern woman, and Dev, a worldly and quite married Bengali man, may in fact be read as an allegory for two different processes. First, it is a parable for the creation of a modern subjectivity in the light of increasingly complex transnational relations. This narrative is organized around three scenes of cartographic instruction and interpretation, each of which inaugurates in Miranda radical reinterpretations of her subjectivity in the world, which culminates in what I call ethical mapping—or the creation of sympathetic connections between individuals of widely different cultural and lived experience. The second process is more explicitly metafictional. Lahiri’s allegorization in “Sexy” extends to the very modes through which we read and misread the story, thereby providing a model for critical reflection on interpretive practice itself.
Aesthetics · Allegory · Art · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Interpreter · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Subjectivity · White (mutation) · Computer Science · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Short Stories in Global Literature · South Asian Cinema and Culture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |