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Abstract
Multi-cultural societies, according to the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha, are in the process of developing hybrid identities that are in a state of flux. Shamsie's Burnt Shadows reflects an individual who retains a strong link with the past but also develops in the future. For the protagonist displacement and loss is an on-going process yet is a living example of a person who can adjust in varied cultures. In contrast Raza the cosmopolitan, with a fluid identity has the capacity to form a new identity from diverse cultural sources. Bhabha's concept of cultural identity provides the backdrop for the reader to reach an understanding of identity.
Keywords: Multi-cultural Societies; Hybrid Identities; Fluid Identity
The individual exists only within a social and cultural context. Therefore, we can really know ourselves only if we know others, and we can really know others only if we know the cultures in which they (and we) exist. (Lindholm 2010, 10)
The concept of cultural identity in a postcolonial situation is presented with a new perspective after the emergence of the concept of 'hybridization' and 'the third space' by the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture (2004). This methodology is particularly effective in our analysis of Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows (2009).1Burnt Shadows (2009) is Kamila Shamsie's (1973- ) latest novel. Her first novel was In the City by the Sea (1998), followed by Salt and Saffron (2000), Kartography (2002) and Broken Verses (2005) (www.bloomsbury.com/author/kamil a-shamsie).
Bhabha argues that the cultures of the present multi-cultural societies are in 'the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion' (Bhabha 2004). From a reading of his work The Location of Culture (2004) we come to understand that no culture and its identity, whether national or otherwise, is pure because, like language, it is open to change, to interactions and to adoptions. As languages evolve and develop so do cultures. As most languages borrow words from other languages, modern languages today are an amalgamation of influences of other languages. In the same way cultures combine within themselves influences and ideas from other cultures they meet.
Hence, languages, cultures and cultural identity are always...