Postcolonial Bildungsroman Theory Reflection 1 Diaspora Gender Performance

Postcolonial Bildungsroman: Theory & Reflection (1) Diaspora, Gender Performance, and Funny Boy

Outline 1. Diaspora: Definitions 2. Diaspora Criticism & Related Issues 3. Gender Performance 4. Funny Boy

1. What is Diaspora?

Diaspora Dia –”across”; sperien – “to sow or scatter seeds. ” Displaced communities of people who have been dislocated from their native homeland through the movement of migration, immigration, or exile. (Braziel and Mannur 1) The word appears “pervaded medieval rabbinical writings on the Jewish diaspora, to describe the plight of Jews living outside of Palestine” (Braziel and Mannur 1) (negative) Exilic, nostalgic (e. g. 落葉歸根, the lonely sojourner) (positive) fertility of dispersion, dissemination, and the scattering of seeds. (e. g. The Black Atlantic)

Five kinds of Diaspora Victim(e. g. Jews, Africans, Armenians), Labour (e. g. Indian, Chinese), Trade (e. g. Chinese and Lebanese), Imperial (e. g. the British), Cultural diasporas. (Cohen ix)

Stuart Hall on Migrant Identity (1) "Migration is a one way trip. There is no ‘home’ to go back to“(Hall 1988).

Stuart Hall on Diaspora Identity (2) Two Dimensions: 1. Diaspora as oneness (in history and identity). 2. Diaspora as heterogeneity (or discontinuous points of identification). “The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeniety and diversity; by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference. “ (S. Hall “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 401 -402 )

In-Betweenness (3) All diasporas are unhappy, but every diaspora is unhappy in its own way. Diasporas refer to people who do not feel comfortable with their nonhyphenated identities as indicated on their passport. Diasporas are people who would want to explore the meaning of the hyphen, but perhaps not press the hyphen too far for fear that this would lead to massive communal schizophrenia. They are precariously lodged within an episteme of real or imagined displacements, self-imposed sense of exile; they are haunted by spectres, by ghosts arising from within that encourage irredentist or separatist movements. Diasporas are both celebrated (by late/postmodernity) and maligned (by early modernity). (Mishra 1)

Avtar Brah: Cartographies of Diaspora 1) proposes intersectionality and diaspora space as an approach to contemporary diaspora 2) “maps the emergence of ‘Asian’ as a racialised category in post-war British popular and political discourse” (source)

Avtar Brah: chapter 8 Main Point opposed to the binarist thinking implied in “minority discourse” argues that contemporary diasporas are each in multilocation, interrelated and forming a diaspora space (multi-axial network) which involves crossing of psychic, geographic, cultural, national borders; by power, people and capitals

Avtar Brah The concept of diaspora places the discourse of ‘home’ and ‘dispersion’ in creative tension, inscribing a homing desire while simultaneously critiquing discourses of fixed origins. (Brah 192 -93) “Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural, and psychic processes. It is where multiple subject positions are juxtaposed, contested, proclaimed or disavowed; where the permitted and the prohibited perpetually interrogate; and where the accepted and the transgressive imperceptibly mingle even while these syncretic forms may be disclaimed in the name of purity and tradition. ” (205)

Diaspora Criticism— Why and How?

Diaspora Criticism—Why? Diaspora forces us to rethink the rubrics of nation and nationalism, while refiguring the relations of citizens and nation-states. Diaspora offers myriad, dislocated sites of contestation to the hegemonic, homogenizing forces of globalization. (In our class, traditional bildungsroman) (Braziel and Mannur 7 -12)

Diaspora Criticism—How? three scenes of exemplification – 1. scene of dual territoriality-- the emphasis falls on divided terrains as exemplars seek to account for diasporic subjects, cultures and aesthetic effects in terms of the subjective split between the geo-psychical entities of here and there, of hostland homeland. (e. g. R. Cohen) 2. scene of situational laterality (e. g. S. Hall, Paul Gilroy) – diasporic identity linked to situation-specific becoming, or the middle passage (milieu) in the active sense, rather than to the tensional pressures exercised by bipolar nation-states. Multi-locale diaspora, simultaneously sundered from and sutured to its various psycho-territories (S. Mishra 17)

Diaspora Criticism—How? (2) scene of archival specificity – archive: “‘systems that establish statements as events’ while differentiating them in their multiple existence and situating them in their unique duration (Foucault, 1992: 128– 31). ” (S. Mishra 101) E. g. Indian diaspora – Indians from different places give -- different definitions to the word “homeland” -- different answers to the question “where do you come from? ”

Questions –FB How is gender performed in Funny Boy by adult and child characters, and by our protagonist Arjie? How you define the connections between gender, sex and sexuality? Is gender “inscribed” on our body, performed by our body, or an expression of our body?

Major Questions about Funny Boy -1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How does the text construct the diaspora spaces—as ”there” in the past, or a space in-between the past present and colonial past and mixing the two. Who are “minorities” in the novel? Intersectionality: How do factors of race, gender, religion, class and nation intersect to influence the characters’ senses of identity and their relations? how does the writer/character’s in-between position influence his writing styles and views of Sri Lanka, histories and cultures? (queering the nation, cultural brokerage or sell-out? ) Terms: border, relational racialization, travel, translation and dialogue, hybridity, (trauma and mourning, ) diasporic space and imaginary

Gender Performativity Stylized repetition of corporeal acts (1988) that produce stable sense of gender; “Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis. The tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions – and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them. “ (1990: 179)

Works Cited Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Braziel, Jana Evans & Anita Mannur. Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1997. Hall, Stuart. “'Minimal Selves' in Identity: The Real Me. ” ICA Document 6, 1988. ---. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora. “ Colonial Discourse & Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Eds. Williams, Patrick & Laura Chrisman. Harvester Whaeatsheaf, 1993. Mishra, Vijay. Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary. New York: Taylor & Francis Routledge, 2007. Butler, Judith Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.