Hybridity Leading towards Identity Crisis: A Study of Daniyal Moeenuddin’s Stories “Our Lady of Paris” and “Lily” as Cultural Rai

Hybridity, in Postcolonial context, refers to dismantling cultures from their totalizing specificities of cultural situations.This cultural decolonization leads towards the emergence of an identity in a contradictory and an ambivalent space called the "Third Space of Enunciation".Like Hybridity, Rai offers a space for articulation in order to voice multiple and diverse narratives.In this context, the present study deals with the issue of identity crisis as the colonizer not only intends to bring civilization to the colonial subjects but also makes the colonized being an Other to itself.Hence, the colonial identity is always in a state of anxiety and flux as a result of mind/body disfigurement and dismemberment of the Colonized.The colonial subjects maintain the position of both master and slave, which, in turn, shatters the binaristic representations of Colonialist Self/Colonized Other.In this context, this study deals with Moeenuddin's (2009) engagement with the colonized double consciousness in his short stories "Our Lady of Paris" and "Lily".His stories bring to the fore a feeling of being divided between two antagonistic cultures and also experiencing multiple cultural identities as a privilege in the Postcolonial context.