INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES,
ENGINEERING & PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES

This paper analyses some aspects of identity in the context of de/reterritorialization and of the new dimensions of identity. It focuses on diasporic identity formed through the concept of rhizome operating through movements of deterritorialization and destratification in Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist. The paper also takes into account the points of connection and heterogeneity as well as the principles of multiplicity that are decisive and result in formation of rhizomic bonds. The thrust of the paper is on the point that how the fabric of the rhizome is a conjunction to the various identities Pran Nath Razdan assumes in the narrative of The Impressionist. Pran’s psychological cruising between the past, ‘roots’ and the future, routes makes him feel deterritorialised and then reterritorialised in the realm of identity parade that he goes through. The concept of ‘linear multiplicity’ also finds a scope in the paper as Pran’s character portrays the same in the novel.