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A classroom without borders
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This "public classroom" is designed to allow my students and me to collaborate on and shape discourse pertaining to the courses that I teach.
We welcome your comments and your participation in public pedagogy.
We welcome your comments and your participation in public pedagogy.
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- Janell Hobson
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6 comments:
May Joseph's work is emblematic of the diasporic scholarship we've been investigating this semester. She looks at how identity is played out within and beyond state boundaries, specifically through media understandings of "Blackness" and "Asianess;" Joseph speaks to how Western projections of Black and Asian identity affects identity formations of Blacks and Asians in non-Western nations. Specifically, how is one a 'citizen' when one belongs to a racial or ethnic group that has historically been marginalized as non-citizens? This is quite a question to tackle, and she lends a voice to a whole other side of diaspora. (We could even talk about the 'diasporic' spread of Westerns and kung fu films, or, like Joseph addresses, the 'diasporic' way they form identities).
I found this to be a powerful work, although its repetitiveness and cherry-picking nature made it difficult to extract Joseph's holistic message attimes. Perhaps this is part of constructing a 'nomadic identity' - picking up fragments and examining their edges, piecing together an identity on its own. I appreciated her focus on dramatics ("Voice is agency," she writes) and film, but more of her personal voice would have greatly enhanced this work for me. I want to know more about her own identity formation and how it has fueled this research.
One note of interest - I have never seen a Bruce Lee film, but I found it fascinating to learn that the kind of kung fu he practiced originated from a nun! Another way to 'gender' the diaspora? Just a thought.
I think that one of the important points that the book emphasized was that the notion of citizenship extends beyond national borders, and is a composite of internal social networks such as kinship, migrancy, and displacement. The notion of citizenship is much more than where you come from. Being socially accepted into a culture is dependent upon the level of comfort an individual has with the customs of that specific cultural identity. This new definition of belonging to culture is much more realistic than relying on localities to define characteristics.
As for M.I.A.'s album Kala, the music was definitey a different genre than I am used to, however, I noticed that a common theme throughout the songs was the struggles in life. M.I.A's song "Hussel" was a good illustration of this theme.
Nomadic Identities is a fascinating work that creates a global space on the topic of citizenship. The concept that citizenship is not something organic, but rather a social construct based on societal norms, connects with the dichotomies of powerful and powerless in society.
Joseph shows how cultures among various racial and ethnic groups are fused together through sharing the same space. This fusion brings forth traditional and fragmented culture. This connects to the Trans Atlantic slave trade and African Americans in today’s society. There seems to be a fragmentation of culture and identities that are shaped through experience.
The concept of exclusion and the effort to forge fragmented identities together is also a prevalent theme through out this book. This is seen through East African Asians attempting to piece identities of Asian and East African and gain alliances between the two. Exclusion happens when one group attempts to piece together fragmented identities and deem that identity as the norm for the whole group. This can be attributed to the patriarchal concept of the ‘black community.’
Joseph’s analysis on the Black community was also interesting. The concept of the “black community,” as a monlithic group allows society to silence women and homosexuals, by deeming race issues as the most imperative and ignoring sexism and homophobia.
Joseph mentions Audre Lorde when discussing this issue. Lorde’s works especially Zami identifies these points of exclusion on various levels. Lorde examines the plight of being a black lesbian and being excluded from the heterosexual black community, homosexual and heterosexual white communities and from the ‘feminine’ lesbian communities. Her experiences and identities denied her citizenship into society as a whole.
What forces control what societies define as citizenship and exclusion?
Nomadic Identities definitely hits the hammer on the nail when reflecting the fact that citizenship is not just about where a person is born. We can recognize this by simply looking at the history of the U.S. Too many African American had to die in an effort to be recognized as citizens and treated as such in America. This is an example of the fact that if the dominant society does except a particular group of people as citizens, that particular group loses its right to be treated as citizens.
I think this book does a great job in highlighting the dispersal of East Indians throughout the world, as East Indians can be found present in the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. Their culture is a combination of what they remember and have held on to from their “motherland” and “homeland.” This is similar to the what one would see in communities of African descent throughout the would. African Americans have held on to many Africanism, yet they are American and are just as influenced by American culture.
The idea og an identity havingto be accepted by the person is intriguing as is the idea of the exclusionary practices of supposedly monolithic group of individuals who don't "fit." I feel as though the "fitting" of an identity is tricky and that an individual can be excluded for any number of reasons. looking at the black community and through the lens of a recent converstaion exclusion from the black community can be because of being female or homosexual but also for being outside of what is considered to be "black." In the conext of the conversation, "you can never be too black but you can be not black eneough." I am led to think of teh nomadic identity and its supposed cohesiveness as a fragile tool for unity that is easily torn under critical examination. I guess that leads me to questin how cohesive is an identity or any identity for that matter. This may be off topic but this is what I was thinking.
Bruce Lee is famous for the nationalist movies he made and acted. Talking about nationalism, I think Chinese people pay more attention to nationality than to citizenship. Nationality has more to do with one's root while citizenship has more to do with one's rights. Maybe that is just my own opinion but I think a spirit regarding national pride is rooted deeply in Chinese philosophy. In ancient times, when a person wanted to be a real man, he was supposed to leave his own home and travel everywhere. Travel, in that sense, is a way of empowering. In Chinese philosophy, nowhere as home means everywhere in this world is your home. I read Joseph's work with that philosophy in my mind all the time and I am confident to represent a portion of Chinese people who see Asian diaspora this way.
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