Culture in the Work of Lahiri

Culture and the Work of Lahiri

Focusing questions: After looking at three or four definitions of culture from different dictionaries, what do these definitions have in common? In the United States, some members of ethnic groups who have been in the country for several generations or more may feel distant from their cultures or even without a culture. What are the various factors that account for these feelings?

The Four Definitions of Culture:

"Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving" (Tamu.edu).

"Culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Today, in the United States as in other countries populated largely by immigrants, the culture is influenced by the many groups of people that now make up the country" (Zimmerman, livescience.com 2012).

"The beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time" (Merriam-Webster's dictionary).

"The behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group" (dictionary.com).

After examining these distinct definitions, it's clear that they have several things in common. Namely, culture tends to be a unifying force among individuals, which brings people together in a group. It allows the sense of collectiveness to be shared and it helped the group define their common values and their common goals. In certain regards, culture helps to provide a roadmap of life for the individual. Culture assists the individual and the group through certain transitional life events. For instance, certain life events such as deaths can be extremely devastating to a cultural group: rites of funeral and burial can make these incidents less painful for all the members of the group. The shared culture helps in guiding these processes so that everyone feels less traumatized by the entire event. The same things even goes for positive events such as births or marriages: both of these events have cultural rituals attached to them to help make the transition smoother so that the change is smooth: even a marriage means massive changes to the family unit, with one member of the family literally leaving to start a new family. The entire process and journey of the wedding and the marital process means that both families can be better eased into this big life change, through familiar cultural rituals.

After carefully reading the story, how do you think Dev and Miranda feel about their relationships to their cultures? How do you believe Dev, and then Miranda, would define culture? What evidence from the text would support your thoughts and beliefs about the two characters?

In Sexy by Lahiri, the reader observes Dev and Miranda engage in a constant amount of cultural fetishization. Miranda to a certain extent fetishizes Dev and Dev's culture, and Dev engages in the same process. To a certain extent, it's this strong level of fetishization which allows the affair to occur. There's a dual sense of exoticism that is shared in Dev and Miranda's perspective of one another that allows the affair to occur. In that sense, Dev and Miranda both look at the other person as representative of a more alluring and fascinating culture. In this manner, Lahiri is able to present the notion that what is foreign to the individual now becomes sexy. Both Dev and Miranda are able to find the mysteriousness of the foreign culture in one another and engage with this foreign quality in an alluring and fascinating manner.