2010 Spring Kate Liu
Outline
Diaspora: Definitions
2. Diaspora Criticism & Related Issues
3. South Asian Diaspora
4. Deepa Mehta
1.
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)
Some Quotations . . . (1)
 "Migration is a one way trip. There is no
‘home’ to go back to“(Hall 1988).
Some Quotations . . .(2)
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 )
Some Quotations . . . (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)
Some Quotations . . . (4)
 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)
 Homing desire  third time-space
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.
 (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 and 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?”
Indian Diaspora
India – a quick look
The old Indian diaspora: the movement of indentured
labour to the colonies (South Africa, Fiji, Trinidad,
Guyana, etc.) for the production of sugar, rubber, and tin
for the growing British and European markets.
1.
2.
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3.
Diaspora
Map
Broke off their connection from home
The new Indian diaspora: largely a post-1960s
phenomenon distinguished by the movement of
economic migrants (but also refugees) into the
metropolitan centres of the former empire as well as the
New World and Australia . (V. Mishra qtd in S. Mishra
101-02)
Major Issues - what are the reasons for the characters to immigrate, sometimes
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more than once?
how do these texts construct the diasporic spaces: either the
“Here” of Canada, UK and US, or “There” of Tanzania for M.G.
Vassanji, Sri Lanka for Shyam Selvadurai and Michael Ondaatje,
and Trinidad for Shani Mootoo and Neil Bissoondath—or a
space in-between and mixing the two.
how do factors of race, gender and nation intersect to influence
the characters’ senses of identity and their relations?
how do the writers’ in-between position influence their writing
styles and views of their “home countries,” histories and cultures?
(queering their nations, cultural brokerage or sell-out?)
Terms: travel, translation and dialogue, hybridity, trauma and
mourning, diasporic space and imaginary
diasporic imaginary
 “I want to suggest that the diasporic imaginary is a
condition (and ‘imaginary’ is the key concept here) of
an impossible mourning that transforms mourning
into melancholia. In the imaginary of diasporas both
mourning and melancholia persist, sometimes in
intensely contradictory ways at the level of the social.
…Freud -- melancholia is in some ways related to an
object-loss which is withdrawn from consciousness, in
contradistinction to mourning, in which there is
nothing about the loss that is unconscious.(1984a:
254)” (V. Mishra 9).
(Born 1950 in Amritsar, Punjab, India)
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[Indian d] Heaven on Earth (2008)
[India] Water (2005)
The Republic of Love (2003)
Bollywood/Hollywood (2002)
[India] Earth (1998)
[India] Fire (1996)
Camilla (1994)
[Indian d] Sam and Me (1992)
Image source:
http://dearcinema.com/interviewdeepa-mehta-729
Fire (1996) Water (2005)
Background:
1) On its opening day in India, some movie theaters were
attacked by Hindu fundamentalists, and the movie
was eventually banned for religious insensitivity. The
film was banned in Pakistan for the lesbian
relationship that the movie plays around.
2) Water’s film set burned in 2000 in the holy city of
Varanasi.
Fire (1996)
Characters
 Radha Ashok  Swami (holy master, 聖哲)
 Sita and Jatin  Julie
 Biji, Mundu
Note: Sita—the wife of Rama, Sita is esteemed as the
standard setter for wifely and womanly virtues for all
Hindu women.
Two Scenes of third spaces:
46:31 -- about the custom of fasting
48 – Chinese vs. Indian
Works Cited
 Braziel, Jana Evans & Anita Mannur. Theorizing Diaspora:
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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.