Articulating Resistance in V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas

Resistance is an act of questioning and offering challenges to the ideological constructs of domination and oppression. Diasporas and migrants are marginalized people living at the periphery of social, political and cultural contexts. Resistance is one of the potent forms of expression through which these marginalized people speak out their struggles and subjugations. To contextualize this phenomenon, the present article evaluates the novel A House of Mr. Biswas. The novel in numerous ways suggests how an individual can offer strong resistance to the various dominating forces and ideologies which pose a major setback for his/her survival and progress in different spheres of life. The present chapter will be an exposition of three different ways through which Mr. Biswas, the protagonist offers resistance to the hegemonic world. In order to give a theoretical framework to the related concepts and theories, help has been taken from the erudition and insights of scholars such as Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Gayatri Spivak Chakravarti, and Antonio Gramsci.