Displacement: A Postcolonial Study in Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet

Abstract

This study is an attempt to grapple the meaning of displacement from the postcolonial perspective of Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet. Through exploring the trauma of displacement in selected characters in the tetralogy, the study tackles the dialectic relation of people/individual, place, and displacement. The study proved that displacement is not confined with the problem of refugees or being geographically and\or physically dislocated from particular place, but it might indicate social, cultural, and psychological displacement that is related to wider newly contemporary concerns such as feeling unhomed in one's homeland or even his own family home due to growing sense of personal unfulfillment, social and cultural misfitting and the like. The methodology of this study is grounded on the post-colonial theory through applying the concept of cultural hybridity besides other related colonial notions. Dwelling on this analytic procedure and the findings, the study put forward the suggestion that considers the concept of cultural hybridity and embracing multiculturalism as the most practical solution to avoid the sense of unhomeliness and displacement.