Black Diasporic Subjectivity and Lacanian Lack of Home: A Reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

This article proposes a re-examination of literary representations of Black diasporic subjectivity and loss of home using Lacanian psychoanalysis. Traditionally, loss of home in the African context has largely been seen as disruptive of Black diasporic subjectivities, and thus widely regarded as a traumatic experience. Drawing on Jacques Lacan's subjectivation process, the article argues that home is a fundamental lack of (Black) diaspora - a forever lost object-cause of desire - whose loss triggers an unending diasporic desire for home. By reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2017), the article examines continual disruptions of Black diasporic subjectivities in the wake of various displacements and their reconstruction via Lacan's subjectivation. Situating Americanah in the contemporary discourses of transnationalism, the article challenges conventional understandings of loss of home by arguing that this diasporic lack of home enables diasporic creativity, inducing creative day-to-day forms of diasporic homemaking in the host land.