superfluous identities: looking beyond the main street

Anusha Bharath,

Published in International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature and Education

ISSN: 2348-2346          Impact Factor:1.9         Volume:1         Issue:2         Year: 14 March,2015         Pages:27-32

Abstract

This article with reference to ‘Out on Main Street’, a short story by the Trinidadian-Canadian writer Shani Mootoo, explores the potentiality of the inexplicable boundaries and the never known categorization of the ‘Self’. It renders a lucid understanding of those identities that come into being outside of existing norms. In this sense, it suggests that by existing beside norms we can begin to reformulate, revisit and recreate boundaries of existence and belonging. Moreover, it argues that these actions are constantly in process and always coming into being, thus demanding a perpetual critique and responsibility. Finally, it suggests that there is a need to work with our own vulnerabilities rather than representing the human as a contained, coherent, invincible being. Through this idea of the hesitant and superfluous characterization articulated in Mootoo’s story, we begin to see non-violent belonging as becoming imaginable. This study hence endeavours to give a broadened perspective and present the normatized section of the society-be it sexual minorities or cultural and lingual minorities- in a better form, so as to help them create their own ‘self’ identity in a heteronormative set-up.

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Kewords

self, norms, boundaries, identity, superfluous, imaginable.

Reference

(1). Butler, J.Undoing Gender. London & New York: Routledge.2004. (2). Mootoo, Shani. Out On The Main Street and Other Stories. Canada, Vancouver: Press Gang, 1993. Print. (3). Thorp, John. The social Construction of Homosexuality: Phoenix, 1992. (4).www.postcolonialweb.org