THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON IDENTITY: ANALYZING JHUMPA LAHIRI'S WORKS IN THE 2025 GLOBAL CONTEXT

Abstract

This article discusses the process of complexification through which mimetic forces of globalization and identity are represented in Jhumpa Lahiri's works, claiming for her stories of exile/diaspora a double edge dimension as a reflection on, and a counter to, the new complexities of hybrid cultural, of displacement, and diasporic consciousness in the 21st century. Locating Lahiri's fictions within a broader global framework, this study employs postcolonial and transnational literary theories to investigate how characters manage anxieties over contested legacies and contemporary cosmopolitan life. This paper studies Lahiri's presentation of second-generation immigrants and Indians, who are haunted by fragmented identities, linguistic alienation and quest for a rightful home across national boundaries, particularly in her books, Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, and Unaccustomed Earth. What it suggests is that while globalization encourages cultural interaction and adaptability, it also exaggerates identity dislocation and self-re-definition as a permanent process of self-negotiation and re-creation. Lahiri’s compressed, allusive prose perfectly captures the effects of Globalisation on the South Asian diaspora. Her story so subtly and poignantly demonstrates that communal experience cannot be universalized without driving people to experience genuine displacement. The article further considers Lahiri's shift from one idiom to another in Italian as a meta-discourse on language and the global subject. It argues that the Lahiri a corpus forms an important literary space for enacting an identity that is not fixed but mutable, dialogic, and intersystem – the liquid and mutating identities represented in Lahiri’s narratives are largely a product of the in between spaces among… nations, languages, and histories.