PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAGMENTATION AND SEMIOTIC RECONSTRUCTION: DIASPORIC IDENTITY IN HAMID’S DISCONTENT AND ITS CIVILIZATIONS

Abstract

The study investigates the intertwined thematic concerns of dislocation and identity in Mohsin Hamid’s Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London (2014), a relatively under-explored text in the domains of contemporary post-colonial and semiotic interrelation. The research is conducted under the lens of Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic framework of Semiotics (Peirce, 1931–1958). By employing Peircean triad (representamen-object- interpretant ), this paper aims to find out how Hamid articulates his dislocated identity which has been constructed and configured by language, memory and geopolitical realities. The interrogation gets further deepened by the methodological application by Mohammad Bagher Aghaei, the schema which  contextualizes Peircean Semiotics within the broader paradigm of subjectivity constituted through cultural hybridity (Aghaei, 2015). Hamid’s essayistic reflections are manifested as textual site of signification that encode cultural displacement, diasporic trajectories and, cultural and ideological disjunction between East and West. While rendering the fragmented self, torn between belonging and estrangement, Hamid becomes both the subject and the interpreter of his own semiotic ecology. The presence of semiotic approaches make the analysis contribute to the discourse on transnational identity formation, foregrounding the importance of having critical semiotic awareness to understand the fractured self within postcolonial and global contexts.