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Unit 24: Jhumpa Lahiri’s “This Blessed House”: Discussion on All Important Questions

camp. The Oxford English Dictionary defines camp as that which is “ostentatious, exaggerated, Notes
affected, theatrical” and finds its earliest use in descriptions of homosexuals’ mannerisms from the
early twentieth century.
The connection to homosexuality highlights an element of camp as it is now more broadly defined. In
as much as early twentieth-century homosexuals paraded and parodied their sexuality, they knowingly
offended social norms of status and taste. This subversive facet of camp has stuck around, and the
word has come to connote things that are enjoyed because of (rather than in spite of) the fact that
they are knowingly in poor taste. As Susan Sontag has described it, “It’s good because it’s awful.”
Camp operates by subversive irony, and Twinkle is in good company as one of its proponents.
Historian Paul Fussell, for example, prescribes camp style for the home decór of those who would be
culturally liberated in his analysis of the American class system: “[They] parody middle class effects,
and parodied items [from the underclass] may make an appearance, like ironically ugly lawn
furniture. . . . The guiding principle will be parody display.”
For Fussell, camp transcends bourgeois culture. Furthermore, Benton Jay Komins defends camp
because of its democratic tendencies and flexibility: “Camp no longer is portrayed as a privileged
expression of any one group; in the true spirit of its inherent pastiche, it takes on multiple meanings.
. . . [It] allows individuals to reappropriate the démodé and is the active process of working through
extant cultural material.”
He goes on to correctly identify economic factors as antecedents to this development: “Massive changes
in the production and distribution of cultural products allowed this message proliferation to take
place.”
To rebut the position that camp is liberatory, let me extend Bauman’s comments in a way that brings
implications to bear on sign systems. The changes in production and distribution Komins refers to
require great exchangeability. For Bauman, the necessity of exchange requires homogeneity, not just
of physical objects but of human desires. This condition leads to the blunting of discernment and
istinction. As signs depend upon difference to function, the lack of distinction becomes incredibly
confusing. This fact sheds light on how camp functions semiotically. Once consumerism masks the
meaning of “signifieds,” the only subversive thing left to do is to tease signifiers. Laura Christian
finds that camp “highlights the discernibly exaggerated or ‘off’ qualities of the signifier; it inserts the
signifier into quotation marks, theatricalizing it.”
Theatrics cannot provide a foundation for personal meaning if its referents shift constantly. That
shift portends great confusion for postmodern life when we consider Lacan’s insight that the
subconscious functions like a sign system. Crafting a signifier that represents oneself in a polysemic
sign system is difficult enough; make the signifieds more or less homogenous and see what happens.
For these reasons, the economically “massive changes” that Komins cites preclude the ability of
individuals to reappropriate kitsch culture in any meaningful way. This play on signifiers with its
attendant dramatic flair motivates Twinkle’s character. She perpetually theatricalizes her campy
treasure hunt. She performs it over and over. She tells her Californian friend about it over the phone.
She relishes telling the houseguests about it. In that instance, her self-conscious irony seems to gush
out of the text, like a line from a stage play. She says, “God only knows what we’ll find, no pun
intended.”
But the pun seems clearly intended. She confirms this reading of the house party as a theatric
performance when she adds the gaudy costuming at the end—the bust of Jesus in a feather hat.The
confusion that arises from forming an ego out of unstable signs afflicts both Sanjeev and Twinkle.
Because Sanjeev is still stuck in the producer mode of consumptive signification, he seems confused
but not hopeless of finding real meaning based on distinctions. This fact causes him to give negative
definitions and descriptions of his desires. “In truth Sanjeev did not know what love was, only what
he thought it was not.”
Lahiri then lists the disappointments and loneliness that constitute Sanjeev’s negative definition of
happiness. Twinkle, as a consumerist, is further gone. All images are foreign and fleeting; only their
pursuit as distraction matters now. Focus for a moment on the bathtub scene: Sanjeev interrupts

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