Abstract

Desirable Daughters (2002) by Bharati Mukherjee has generally been studied in terms of its preoccupation with identity, migrant family relationships, classes, caste and gender politics of migration. The present article will claim that the work of a continuous, albeit frequently hidden, dystopian imagination based on the varying types of surveillance is also in play in this novel. By applying the Foucauldian theoretical framework of panopticism and Deleuzian theoretical framework of control societies to Desirable Daughters, this paper demonstrates that the notion of diaspora as regards it is perceived in the novel of Mukherjee is not only a hybridity or a place of opportunity but a disciplined field whereby subjects, particularly the women are measured, controlled and forced to display specific kinds of identities. The plot lines, narrative voice and character strategies include an architecture of watchfulness functioning by the state and immigration apparatus, the multicultural gaze of host societies, the expectancies of homelands as well as the interiorised self-surveillance of characters in the novel. This paper performs a close reading of the main characters, devices of narrations and socio-spatial settings portrayed in the novel to exemplify how surveillance brings on a dystopian consciousness where freedom is conditional, identity is a weapon of existence, and agency is re-constructed. This paper finds that Desirable Daughters by Mukherjee is a work of contribution to the body of diasporic literature as it forms the use of the terms of surveillance and dystopian theory into the lexicon of critical writing of diaspora studies.