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Title Renegotiating Kitsch and Rhizome: A Post-Identitarian perspective on Milan Kunders's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Festival of Insignificance.

Author(s) Ms. Nayab Murad

Abstract Title: Renegotiating Kitsch and Rhizome: A Post-Identitarian Perspective on Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Festival of Insignificance, This research aims to trace the patterns of Kitsch and Rhizome in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) and The Festival of Insignificance (2016) to interpret aesthetic and identity marginalization, identity metamorphosis, and post- identitarian Rhizome in postmodern (con)texts. To explore the relationship between Kitsch and marginalization, and the metamorphosis of rooted identity into post-identity, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of deterritorialization, reterritorialization, and Rhizome, and Catherine A. Lugg’s concepts of Kitsch and resistance and subversion of kitsch together supply a theoretical framework to this study. In the selected novels, Kundera’s characters exhibit nomadic strains that go from the peripheries to the centre and from there to new peripheries. This shifting of centre and periphery not only dismantles the binary but creates yet another binary. Focusing on renegotiation of kitsch, I argue that kitsch promotes marginalization. Lugg’s perspective on subversion and resistance against Kitsch helps rationalize the impacts of political Kitsch on aesthetic and identitarian marginalization. Broadening this milieu to the identitarian context, this research aims to analyse the centre/periphery and rooted/rootless binaries and subsequently conceptualizes post-identitarian Rhizome. Through textual analysis of the selected texts, the study attempts to explore the renegotiation of kitsch to develop a debate on identity in postmodern (con)texts. Hence, the major purpose of this research is twofold: to explore the relationship between political kitsch and marginalization, and the shift from rooted identity to post-identity to explore the emergence of rhizomatic identity in the postmodern era. The study will contribute to the debates on post-identity with reference to kitsch and rhizome to renegotiate the underpinnings of these concepts and rationalize post-identity.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2023-06-01

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