Description
This Paper challenges Mary Louise Pratt's (1992) notion that transculturation emanates from contact zone; the shared spaces between colonized and colonizer where cultures of both the groups meet. this paper contends that British India as a contact zone is represented through fictional travel writing assimilated the asymmetrical relations of power between colonials and the natives while debunking the idea of transculturation on both ends of colonial and native culture. Drawing on the narrative of Kim (1901) and A Passage to India (1924), this research discredits the basic notion of sympathy and friendship through personal association which the white writers possessed for the native culture and language. This research employs discourse and textual analysis to focus on language and narrative. It arguments the idea of hegemonic spatial relationship and how it was affected by the British travel writers. Since the asymmetrical relations are discussed as the underlying problems of the contact zone as the basis of transculturation is not accurate, hence imperialist individuality, agenda and their occupation of dual space is discussed in detail. This objective is achieved by comparative analysis of Pratt’s Imperial Eyes (1992) and Homi K. Bhabha’s (2001) idea of hybridity resulting in the creation of third space which created hybrid culture of both imperials and natives while rejecting the idea of transculturation rendering it as a monolithic concept.
Keywords: Contact Zones, Transculturation, Hybridity, Colonial Power Relations, Third Space.
