Heideggerian ‘Out-of-Joint’ Situation and the New Horizons in Postcolonial Literature: Interpreting the ‘Zizekian Extimacy’ in Naipau

Abstract

Though Naipaul’s geo-spatial dislocation from the Periphery (Third World) to the Centre (London) generates an optical distance that helps observing the postcolonial reality objectively, his works, at the same time, prove that he is closely attached to the reality he left behind. This situation can be termed as ‘ex-timated’ fictionalization of his experiences in which the inner becomes intimately ex-centred with the outer. It indicates that his geographical dislocation does not indicate a decisive ontological detachment from the postcolonial reality that he is alienated with. Yet it is this ‘in-between situation’ that truly makes him a noteworthy writer. His de-territorialization has been unable to fully embrace the new metropolitan reality and forget the nostalgia of the chaotic periphery completely, as shown mainly in the fictional characters like Salim (A Bend in the River) and Ralph Singh (The Mimic Men). This symptom is visible even in other Naipaulian novels such as A House for Mr Biswas and Guerillas where Naipaul positions his major characters between Periptery (tradition) and Centre (modernity), whose existence and imaginations are forever stuck between the post-colonial reality and a dreamy alien land. According to Chandra B. Joshi (1994), Naipaul is ‘at once too close and too far’ to the reality that is split in his own existence. While also accepting the fact that his repetitive literary revisits to the postcolonial Asia and Africa could provide an objective reality within the failed project of decolonization, a Zizekian analysis suggests that Naipaul could not effectively elevate himself from his Heidaggerian ‘out-of-joint’ situation (Zizek 1997, 2001) and exploit his ‘homelessness’ to discover a brand new reality within his metropolitan existence. Instead, he is ex-timately confined to an ‘ex-static’ (or ex-centric) postcolonial situation that leaves him in the deadlock of ‘depersonalized objective narrations’ and ‘situational consciousness’ of Third World Literature (Jameson 1986). On the basis of the above confinement that exists within Naipaul’s literary endeavor, this review suggests that to understand the postcolonial situation better, in addition to the existing literary approaches, Slavoj Zizek’s idea of ‘extimacy’ (2011) is of substantial significance.