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ess of repositioning in the non-Indian diaspora. Through a reading of the text based on Hall’s approach to cultural identity, the book takes into consideration the variability, contingency, plurality and heterogeneity of identities by exploring the life stories of the first and second generation Asian-American migrants and their search for forms and positions by which they recognize and constitute themselves. It reflects how immigration is articulated in different and sometimes unpredictable ways of identity formation.

Another major aspect of the novel through Stuart Hall’s cultural theories is the notion of subjectivity. Hall regards subject as a subject-in-process not an already constituted subject. Lahiri‘s novel examines how people actually construct their sense of self in real social relationships in the context of competing forces and interests. Throughout the book, there is always an emphasis on the active role that characters play in constructing their identities as a free-floating and arbitrary process, the one which is not determined by socioeconomic forces, but creatively put together. Articulation theory describes how people make identities which are not previously determined.

“The Namesake” is also a narrative of names. Lahiri deals elaborately with the Bengali custom of giving two names to a child which can be read as a metaphor to emphasize the multicipility of identities and their constructedness like signifiers in language. Name, just as identity, is an empty sign and a relational concept outside the signifying field and its meaning changes within the context. Examining the notion of name in the novel based on Hall’s perspective offers an insight into the ways the logic of articulation works as a process of creating connections and combination of relations between fragments and contradictions as well as similarities in the constitution of identity.

In this context, this research is expected to examine cultural identity as a floating signifier which is articulated as a set of positioning in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”. It illuminates the complexity of diasporic experience through the characters of the novel and the manifestation of identity creation as an active and fluid process of becoming. Regarding Lahiri’s “The Namesake” as a diasporic novel possessing characteristics of Hall’s cultural theories for reading of the text, the study focuses on Hall’s non-essentialist analysis of cultural identity as well as his notion of subject-in-process for decoding the process of identity construction in Lahiri’s novel.

The research also tries to examine Lahiri’s concept of name, using Hall’s discursive approach to indicate multiple connotations of a single name as a discursive construct which its meaning is not the same outside the signifying field. The study tries to offer insight into how cultural studies can be used to understand the way culture works in the context of our everyday life through focusing on the unique process of identity formation for each character in the novel. Overall, having all the above-mentioned points in mind, the research makes an attempt to answer the following questions:

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