Slumdog Millionaire Meets “India Shining”: (Trans)national Narrations of Identity in South Asian Diaspora

Abstract

This study uses the filmic text Slumdog Millionaire to examine how the tension between the nation and the transnational was communicated within South Asian diaspora. Findings from the textual analysis of commentary in the New York Times, The Guardian and the Times of India show that identity is articulated in purist as well as hybrid ways among South Asian diasporans. A lack of comfortable fit between cultural identity and place is evident. The analysis also shows that diasporic identity, hybridity, nation-state, and transnational forces work in particular configurations to raise consciousness about subaltern oppressions and exclusions within multiscalar operations of power and representation in globalizing conditions. Implications for intercultural communication and transitions are discussed.     

Half and Half: An (Auto)ethnography of Hybrid Identities in a Korean American Mother-Daughter Relationship

Abstract

This essay focuses on how immigrant mothers and second generation interracial daughters construct, perform, and negotiate racial and ethnic hybrid identities. Placing my mother's experiences in dialogue with my own experiences, I (auto)ethnographically examine how we navigate our mother-daughter relationship and intercultural and interracial identities in relation to discourses of Asian American-ness. I identify three sites for identity formation: location, language, and the dialectical tension of assimilation-preservation. I argue that the enactment of a racial self is not always a conscious part of one's identity. Rather, we each enact racialized cultural identities that are contextually performed and continuously shifting.     

A Multimodal Approach to Identity: Theorizing the Self through Embodiment,Spatiality, and Temporality

Abstract

This article problematizes the theoretical assumption of communication-as-symbolic that delimits the way identity is theorized. I argue that deconstructing identity requires moving beyond the symbolic construction of social categories, and instead focusing on how a perceptual and embodied subject is constituted through communication. Informed by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologically driven approach to critical inquiry, I present a multimodal approach that reveals how perceptual subjectivity and the reflexive body are constituted within, and constitutive of, the symbolic mechanisms of social construction. Utilizing various examples pertinent to intercultural communication, I theorize cultural identity through the perspective of communication-as-embodied.     

Critical Complete-Member Ethnography: Theorizing Dialectics of Consensus and Conflict in Intracultural Communication

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on the critical potential of complete-member ethnography (CME) through a retrospective and methodological exploration of a 2004 ethnographic project. I offer my provisionary theorization of critical CME (CCME) by reworking data and experimenting with CCME writing. CCME is an innovative intracultural praxis which engages in and facilitates social justice and cultural reform through its dialectical and highly personalized communication theorization. I draw from three ethnographic traditions: ethnography of communication, critical ethnography, and autoethnography to theorize both consensual and conflictual aspects of CCME as dialectics. Implications for identity investments are discussed.     

The ‘diaspora advantage’ of Pauline Chan (1956–): from multicultural filmmaker to cultural broker

ABSTRACT

This is the first academic paper to critically introduce and document the 30-year screen career of Pauline Chan, Australia’s highest profile Chinese film director, television actress and media producer. Sydney-based, Vietnam-born, Hong Kong-educated and US-trained, Chan has directed six films, starred in 14 and produced four television series and films. Despite her prolific career, there has been no sustained research on her profile and repertoire. This paper evaluates the evolution of Chan’s career using the diaspora ‘advantage’ as a new approach. Characterised by mobility rather than culturalism, the term refers to the benefits brought by and skills of diaspora groups that have allowed them to flourish as transnational actors able to leverage resources in both their countries of origin and settlement. It begins by elaborating how Chan’s diaspora advantage has allowed her to challenge welfare multiculturalism and extend aesthetic multiculturalism. It further documents her transition from a multicultural filmmaker to a cultural intermediary by leveraging her diasporic advantage across the film sectors in China and Australia, and opening up new industrial routes outside of the confines of policy. Using interdisciplinary methods to screen biography that include interviews with the filmmaker, film archival research, critical cultural policy studies, and studies in Asian Australian cinema and political economy, this paper argues that the new approach of the diaspora advantage turns the deficit associated with the diaspora into a dividend that has the potential to rethink the imaginary between Asia and Australia.     

Muslim women against FEMEN: Asserting agency in online spaces

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the activist group FEMEN and the online reactions to their “International Topless Jihad Day” protests. Specifically, I analyze the vernacular discourses present in the Facebook group Muslim Women Against FEMEN and their counter-protests as they articulate their dissatisfaction with FEMEN’s imperialist feminism. I argue that online spaces can provide meaningful sites for Muslim women to reassert their agency alongside of, rather than despite of, their Muslim identity. Tensions over the boundaries of feminist activism help us understand how digital spaces can aid in developing a more capacious understanding of agency that actively decolonizes imperialist feminist politics.     

Stages and Transitions of Relational Identity Formation in Intercultural Friendship: Implications for Identity Management Theory

Abstract

In light of identity management theory (IMT), this research seeks to uncover the stages and transitions that explain the process of relational identity formation within intercultural friendships. Three stages (i.e., initial encounter, interaction, and involvement) and two transition phases emerged within the intercultural friendships of this research. This study concludes that while IMT contributes to our understanding of the process of intercultural relationship formation, it overlooks how intercultural relationships transition from one stage to another and the influences of networks and a third cultural context.     

Identity Mobilization Practices of Refugees: The Case of Iraqis in the United States and the War in Iraq

Abstract

This study illustrates the narrative construction of diasporic refugee identities in times of sociopolitical tensions. Specifically, this paper is concerned with how Iraqi refugees living in the United States constituted their identities through narrating in times of the War in Iraq. Gergen's social constructionist approach towards narrating and current theorizing in diaspora studies build the theoretical bases for the analysis. Narratives were collected through participant observations, interviews, and group discussion in the Pacific Northwest of the United States before, during, and after combat operations in Iraq were declared to be over by President Bush. The paper answers three questions. First, which events triggered the construction of Iraqi refugee identities in the United States? Second, what is the role of narrating in constituting Iraqi identities? Third, do the Iraqi narrators construct diasporic imaginations and if so, how? The findings show that the narrative construction of being Iraqi and a refugee was a relational achievement and situated response. The respondents constructed imaginations of transnational communities that included Iraqis in Iraq, Iraqis in refugee camps, and Iraqis in the United States. By integrating their emerging political voices in the United States with their political resistor identities in Iraq, the narrators made salient transnational links between being Iraqi, a displaced person, and a member of U.S. society, disrupted political discourses about Iraqis in the United States, and affirmed moral values.     

Best of both worlds or refusal to comply? The rich kids of Tehran on Instagram

ABSTRACT

This article offers a textual analysis and semiotic reading of the Rich Kids of Tehran's (RKOT’s) Instagram page. Contributing to scholarship on Iranian youth media practices, this article interrogates how the RKOT navigate urban and rural space to engage in everyday processes of resistance against global and local systemic oppression. Grounding their visual representations on Instagram in historical and cultural context, the author questions how and when quotidian actions are transformed into political transgressions when posted on social media. This article emphasizes the RKOT's agency in shaping their brand by analyzing representations of gender performance, intertextuality, and national identity on Instagram.     

Contextual Negotiation of Cultural Identifications and Relationships: Interview Discourse with Palestinian,Israeli, and Palestinian/Israeli Young Women in a U.S. Peace-Building Program

Abstract

An integration of critical and interpretive perspectives frames the analysis of interview discourse from participants in a U.S. peace-building dialogue program during 1997–1998. Israeli, Palestinian, and Palestinian/Israeli identified participants’ discourse reveals that they negotiate multiple and contextually contingent cultural identifications, and that the context both enables and constrains their relationships with each other. Discursive themes demonstrate the complexity and struggle in which participants position themselves and exercise levels of agency, and negotiate their cultural and intercultural relationships. The findings of the study substantiate calls by scholars and practitioners to incorporate contextual factors such as history, politics, social hierarchies, and agency into research and training models of intergroup dialogue.     

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Verbal and Nonverbal Strategies of Apologizing

Abstract

Two studies examined cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal apology strategies. Self-administered structured survey was employed with a convenience sample composed of undergraduates. U.S. American and Chinese participants were asked to answer questions regarding their choice of verbal and nonverbal apology strategies in a potentially apologetic situation. Study 1, using open-ended questions, and Study 2, using close-ended questions, yielded some different findings. For example, both the U.S. American and Chinese participants did not show significant differences in their apology strategies toward in-group and out-group members in Study 1, but the Chinese showed significant differences in their apology strategies toward in-group and out-group members in Study 2. Overall, the most common apology strategy in the given situation for both cultural groups was a simple apologetic statement. Other findings, implications, and limitations of these studies are discussed.     

The separation of economy and sentiment: a comparison of how individuals perceive hostile worlds

ABSTRACT

Analyses of the relationship between economy and sentiment tend to focus on connection rather than separation. Scholars recognize that individuals sometimes identify moral conflicts between economy and sentiment, but primarily focus their research on the boundary or relational work performed to mitigate or disappear the conflict. Instead, I analyze how individuals talk about the relationship between economy and sentiment as separate or hostile, comparing two theoretically distinct groups: non-religious individuals and practicing evangelicals. The comparison allows me to analyze patterns of discourse and boundary-making based on access to institutionalized culture. I find that both groups articulate perceptions of hostile worlds by: (1) maintaining the taboo against talking about money, (2) recommending neutral separation, and (3) demarcating areas of life as too sacred for money. Through comparison, I find that non-religious respondents describe a less permeable vertical boundary line, whereby economy and sentiment are separated into separate spheres, as if side-by-side, while evangelicals describe a more permeable horizontal boundary line, where separation is maintained through the use of consistent hierarchical discourses that assert the moral importance of sentiment over economy. My findings underscore how unequal access to cultural schema differentially shape how individuals connect economy and sentiment, if at all.     

The paradoxes of creativity in Guangzhou,China’s wholesale market for fast fashion

ABSTRACT

In Guangzhou’s fast fashion sector, creativity operates as practices in boundary-making, which emerge in spaces within the blurred boundaries that delineate original and copy production. Using the Xi Fang Hang market as a case study, I demonstrate how the quick turnover of fast fashion commodities compels different groups of market participants to claim contesting definitions and practices of creativity. While building managers and wealthy entrepreneurs mobilise techniques of rent extraction and claim originality as rightful sources of creativity, less established migrant entrepreneurs use design copying as a tool for market survival. With limited resources and formal education in fashion and merchandising, migrants claim success in delivering the right styles and trends at the right time and in keeping their businesses afloat. Together, these competing practices constitute what I call ‘paradoxes of creativity’, dynamics that highlight creativity as a fluid cultural category that is always subject to tensions and contestations.     

Between business and morality: cultural politics in independent bookshops in China

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how cultural businesses may facilitate contentious political activity in authoritarian contexts. Existing research in Western liberal democracies has shown the widespread political activism of actors in the cultural and creative industries. Whether such activism exists in authoritarian society, how it may differ in character and form, and what implications this will have for our understanding of relations between business, politics, and culture in authoritarian countries remain to be addressed. Drawing on data collected from 55 ‘independent bookshops’ in China, I illustrate how these organisations perform ‘cultural politics,’ a type of political participation in which actors employ mainly symbolic means to express social and political concerns. The organisations’ economic relations and conditions facilitate their efforts to create spaces in which contentious questions can be raised, sensitive topics explored, and alternative ideas expressed, despite the Chinese state’s political regulation of the cultural sphere. The finding of the economic embeddedness of cultural politics sheds new light on our understanding of the political economy of cultural businesses in contemporary China.     

Space Making: Chinese Transnationalism on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands

Abstract

As the U.S.-Mexico border becomes more diverse and militantly guarded, interactions between various cultural groups grow more frequent and convoluted. This article describes the ways in which a group of Chinese transnationalists as recent arrivals (re)construct the meanings of El Paso in quotidian interactions. Recurrent themes on the ways in which participants constructed El Paso as an unauthentic American space are discussed. I argue that spatial identities are products of various forces and further reconceptualize the natural connections between place, people, and culture.     

Subaltern voices and postcolonial schizophrenia: The political tensions of M.I.A.’s Kala

ABSTRACT

Banned from the U.S. during the “war on terror,” the British/Sri Lankan hip-hop artist M.I.A. responded by recording her 2007 album Kala in multiple locations throughout the global South, collating indigenous musical styles and unorthodox recording techniques. Via a critical/cultural analysis, this paper explores M.I.A.’s work on Kala as subaltern resistance mobilized by “differential movement,” particularly in its mode of production, which operated outside of, and in opposition to, institutional mechanisms designed to expunge or neutralize politically subversive art and artists. Yet M.I.A.’s musical sampling also surfaces conflicts between creative freedom and cultural appropriation, emblematizing “postcolonialist/postmodern schizophrenia” (Vályi, 2011. Remixing cultures: Bartók and Kodály in the age of indigenous cultural rights. In K. McLeod & R. Kuenzli (Eds.), Cutting across media: Appropriation art, interventionist collage, and copyright law (pp. 219–236). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.).     

Chinese Postgraduate Students in the UK: A Two-Way Reciprocal Adaptation

Abstract

Chinese students who come to study in the UK and their UK teachers have to adapt to cultural differences in their experience of and expectations about teaching and learning traditions and practices. Qualitative and quantitative data were obtained for Chinese postgraduate students and the staff teaching them in two Scottish universities to investigate the extent of their shared perceptions and their reciprocal adaptations. Students, especially those coming in groups, tended to deal with problems among themselves, which resulted in their teachers having limited awareness of their students’ difficulties. Several themes that emerged in relation to reciprocal adaptation are discussed.     

Ontological violence: Catherine Malabou on plasticity,performativity, and writing the feminine

ABSTRACT

Catherine Malabou's opinion of non-essentialist models of gender identity and art is unambiguous: in her words, they are ‘catastrophic’ to women and to artists (Malabou [2014]. ‘Sujet: Femme'. de(s)générations des féminismes 21, 29-38: 135). What, then, are the implications of Malabou's hallmark concept of ‘plasticity’ on theories of performativity? Has plasticity come to supplant performativity, just as Malabou believes that it has come to supplant Derridean writing? Or if, as Malabou suggests, philosophical concepts are inherently plastic, may we maintain that performativity was always already plastic? In the following article, I read Malabou's work on writing alongside her work on the feminine in order to question how plasticity and performativity might be examined together to theorise the ways in which the discursive and the material interact in the production of subjectivities. By highlighting the performativity at play within Malabou's own writing about the end of writing, I propose that her work challenges her claim that literature cannot deconstruct philosophy. In response to Malabou's anti-essentialist plastic theory of the essence of woman, I underline the parallels between performativity and plasticity and suggest that the two concepts overlap in their mutual configuration of identity and form as mutable and transformable.     

Buscando para nuestra latinidad: Utilizing La Llorona for Cultural Critique

Abstract

This essay analyzes the contemporary constructions of Latina/o identity, Latina/o gender and Latina/o nationality as evidenced in the self-proclaimed “first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America,” Chasing Papi. The contradictions between the film's progressive mission and the film's representations are teased out by a cross-reading of the film's usage of the popular Chicana/o mythic figure, La Llorona. Invoking La Lorona as muse and means, we find that the Latin Lover stereotype succeeds in its anti-assimilationist task while concurrently furthering confusion on who and what is a U.S. Latina/o. However, the authors also demonstrate how cultural cross-readings can provide hope out of delimiting discursive constructions.