Apophasis as an Approach to Diasporic Identification in V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas

Nagyung Sohn. 2015. Apophasis as an Approach to Diasporic Identification in V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas. Studies in British and American Language and Literature 116, 123-141. This paper explores apophatic aspects of the diasporic identity quest in A House for Mr. Biswas. A House is one of V. S. Naipaul’s novels that delineate Indian immigrants’ diasporic experience in postcolonial times. Seeking identity is what the postcolonial immigrants inevitably confronted, and, in this regard, it is not strange that the subject of identity and its identification recur in Naipaul’s writings. In this paper, this issue is explored through apophasis, a form of rhetoric and reasoning, in that Mr. Biswas gains his individuality through apophatic speculation. Apophasis is a way for finding or describing a certain ambivalent object by using negative propositions, or by using words to highlight its ineffability. In terms of seeking his diasporic identity, Mr. Biswas pursues his individuality by going through the long course of denying and doubting his family relationships, Hindu traditions, Indian groupism, and postcolonial institutions. Similarly, his emotions in relation to his family and his desire to write about his life are described, in part, as unsayable. That is another facet of apophasis: a communing experience beyond words with the paradox of “expressing” by “not expressing.”