Diasporas and Twister – “The game that ties you up in knots!”

As the discussion of hybridity and the negotiation between identities and cultures continued in class this week, I could not help but think of the game Twister. In this game people’s bodies are crisscrossed over various locations, intertwined with the other players of the game. Similarly, within the multicultural landscape of Canada, diasporas straddle various locations, shifting from one to the next, never quite forming a solid identity. Just when you think you may have a direction laid out, another move shifts everyone into another location, causing a domino effect of cultural dissolution and assimilation. A player wins the game once everyone else has fallen and they are left standing in some crazy, awkward position. Oftentimes it seems we can have that same perception of diaspora groups and multiculturalism. The culture seen as the most hybrid is the one which can adopt the most diversity while still standing firm in the origins and traditions of their homeland.

Arjun Appadurai’s explanation of ethnoscapes and mediascapes further explores this notion of diaspora and hybridity. Appardurai works through the concept of the ‘imagine world’ whereby “the lines between the ‘realistic’ and the fictional landscape…are blurred, so that the further away these audiences are from the direct experience of metropolitan life, the more likely they are to construct ‘imagined worlds’” (299). As such, the developing world, through the media, is able to create an image of the developed world – a modernized world. However, a question I was thinking of in class is, how much of an ‘imagined world’ do we create of developing nations? It is fair to say that just as media shapes the worldview on Western culture, so too does it shape the narrative of the developing world. Unless we have visited these nations and got a direct eye witness to the standard of living, we would not have an accurate narrative of their life. Diasporas living within Canada, through alternative media outlets, can help correct our cultural blindness. We often frame what nations are experiencing within our Western perspective, not realizing that this perspective is heavily loaded with our privileged views on democracy and freedom.

Sinclair and Cunningham’s description of hybridity draws attention to the struggle and “knots” formed between host and home nation. While traveling I am sure all of us have in some way experienced the feeling of alienation, but it is hard for myself to imagine this experience as a permanent one. I remember my travels in Spanish speaking communities and the uncertainty and feeling of not belonging I felt. As I logged onto the Internet in the city café, I found myself feeling at ease with the ability to communicate with my family, in my mother tongue, over email. The technoscapes of our culture may create unrealistic narratives of the world, but they also help form new people’s groups. Within these groups, identity flows, transcending time and space and above all provides for opportunities of political and social change.

Is Canada Multicultural? Stepping outside of the definition

In class, an interesting discussion sparked about whether or not Canada is multicultural. At the beginning of her presentation, Amanda defined multiculturalism as follows (well, this is what I have in my notes, I apologize if it’s incorrect): Multiculturalism –An individual’s “culture” must be maintained, it is not inherent but must be actively practiced; multiculturalism is not a project of the nation state.

In the end, it seemed that the general consensus was that multiculturalism itself did not exist or could not exist.

I found this discussion to be really interesting, and again the rationale for Canada’s non-multiculturalism partly rested on the capitalization of difference. As discussed, the food court is not a true example of multiculturalism because each restaurant is at once being exploited based on its difference/exotic appeal, but is also watered down in order to meet Western standards.

True enough, but our discussion left me wondering just how much of our debate was dictated by a single word, a single definition, that of course of multiculturalism. Author Janet Wolff revealed how the words we use shape communication and our understanding of history. In the language of modernity, words themselves are powerful, but often very restrictive.

Of course, if we stick to the definitions of multiculturalism, maybe Canada isn’t multicultural at all, but this problem lies more so with the choice of words than with Canada’s failed efforts. By sticking to the definition of multiculturalism, we are asking that an ideal of multiculturalism be met, and just as with definitions of democracy, freedom and the public sphere, these ideals are impossible to meet.

But this doesn’t mean that we should dismiss Canada as non-multicultural, instead I would call for a redefinition of the term. Or better yet, we need to stop being so loyal to definitions and start looking outside the pages of the dictionary.

Is Canada multicultural? I know that Toronto is. Simply riding the streetcar across the city, you will encounter a number of different areas and subsequently different cultures. The streetcar is often filled with different accents and languages. Toronto has a number of different cultural events, such as Caribana and Taste of the Danforth. While the argument may again return to “capitalizing/exploiting difference”, perhaps for now this is one of the main ways to show appreciation for another culture. And maybe, what multiculturalism means, is that another culture is able to really celebrate and brand their culture without judgment. Where’s the harm in that?

Imagined Communities 2.0: Diasporas and the use of Social Media

Diaspora describes the dispersal of people from their land of origin to other countries. What is distinct about diaspora is that they maintain a link to their homeland and stay connected to those who have moved to other countries. In the globalized world, social media has allowed diaspora to cross borders and maintain a connection to their homeland. Social Media is instrumental to diaporas as it allows them to cross geographical and political boundaries in order to transmit and sustain their traditions. Diasporas who interact through social media are able to participate in an imagined community as a strategy to maintain “long-distance nationalism.” Social Media exemplifies the way in which communication technologies have been utilized by people to form social relationships but also to maintain those that already exist.

Anderson characterized national cultures as “imagined communities” as being “bonded discursively by a sense of deep, horizontal belonging to an imagined common origin and a mythical past, the imagi(nations) of deterritorialized people, even when scattered through different lands, may be marked correspondingly by “absentee patriotism and long-distance nationalism” (Sinclair, 19). The Article, “Imagined, Online communities,” does a great job explaining why and how social media can be theorized as an imagined community. He explains that while members within an online community may have never met, there still exists a sense of solidarity among them.

Appadurai noted that with “‘print capitalism’ a new power was unleashed in the world, the power of mass literacy and its attendant large-scale production of projects of ethnic affinity that were remarkably free of the need for face-to-face communication...” (Appadurai, 2). Print media was a new way of disseminating information that “made it possible for people to think about themselves and relate to other in new ways.” Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter have had similar effects as they have created new opportunities for diaspora to stay connected and share information, keeping them updated on the events taking place in their homeland. It is interested how powerful these online communities have become. Social networks such as Facebook and twitter exemplify globalization from below as they have allowed people to go against those who may have particular interests. For example, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, journalists were reporting stories that were inconsistent with the stories produced by citizens using social media. In this case, social media allowed people to inform each other and do their own reporting on the events in Haiti.

The Agency of the Grassroots: Egyptian Diaspora Empowered by Social Media

Many influential scholars are very pessimistic about the agency of the deployment of media by grassroots. Appadurai (1990), innovatively identifying five disjunct dimensions of “scapes” in global cultural economy, asserted that mediascapes are only tools of nationstates to pacify separatists or potential ideas of difference.

"National and international mediascapes are exploited by nationstates to pacify separatists or even the potential fissiparousness of all ideas of difference…exercising taxonomic control over difference, by creating various kinds of international spectacle to domesticate difference, and by seducing small groups with the fantasy of self-display on some sort of global or cosmopolitan stage."

While Cinclair & Cunningham (2000) explored how diasporas make use of communication media, they only exemplified how diasporas redefine the cultural identities in hybrid terms, the transcendence of the dichotomy of home and host via television.

But where is the agency of the grassroots in political movements? With the development of media technology and the wide spread of social networking media in recent years, do we have enough reason to reconstruct the role of media in the political movements? The Egyptian revolution facilitated by Egyptian diaspora using social media tools (Blogs, Facebook, Twitter) lends some supports to this inquiry.

Social media has played a remarkable role not only in how Egyptians used it to organize the anti-government protests, but in how the Egyptian diasporas have witnessed, relayed information and influenced the world order. Although mainstream media are belittling the power of social media by claiming that the access to internet has been blocked, uses in Egypt can always find ways to bypass Twitter and Facebook blocks through mobile and third-party apps, proxy sites, software, VPN…On the other hand, the Internet block raised no less anxiety of the Egyptian Diasporas than people in homeland. They use telephone to get information from protests and spread them out through social media (@Jan25voices). They are important nexus linking the local and the global. Serving for this desperate demand, Google, Twitter and SayNow engineers released "Speak to Tweet" for Egyptians, a service that turns voice messages into tweets with the #Egypt tag attached. Egyptians could use their landlines to call one of three international numbers and leave messages.

Many many Egyptian Americans utilize this information to criticize what the Western media is getting wrong. It is very important to shape the narrative and get it to stick, especially in situations of crisis because history is always written by the victors and the powers. For example, a New York-based Egyptian blogger interviewed by CNN and appealed to the media to change the words “revolt” and “uprising” and “revolution” and not “chaoes” and “unrest”. Then, CNN changed its on-screen headlines from “CHAOS IN EGYPT” to “UPRISING IN EGYPT”.

Organized via Facebook, many Egyptian diasporas marched and protested in Los Angeles, San Franciso, Washington, New York and in cities around the world, demanding that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak relinquish power. Pressures from the mediascape and ethnoscape forced Washington to make a subtle, but incontrovertible shifting of the U.S. position. They declined to articulate explicit support for Mubarak. Ironically, the power of empire can be "positive" and "desirable" in some sense.

That said, it is still very interesting to explore the motivation of the active deployments of social media of the Egyptian diasporas. I think we can address these or related issues from other angles in the coming weeks (e.g., Hybridity, Community…).

Imagined Worlds and the Global Flow.

I was interested in Appadurai’s discussion of imagination, imagined worlds and scapes. His argument seems to be centered on the idea that cultural transactions and interactions are more readily available and instantaneous now more than ever. The previous problems that existed globally, like time, distance and limited technology were eliminated as a part of ‘Print Capitalism’. This unleashed new technologies and power, little need for face-to-face communication and a new type of ‘neighborliness’. Here Appadurai suggests the importance of imagination as a new form of social practice and how it links scapes and dimensions of global flow.

There are five dimensions of Global Flow:

-ethnoscapes- landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world (tourists/immigration)

-mediscapes-landscape of images, distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information

-technoscapes- global configuration, fluidity between technology and how it moves at high speeds across boundaries

-finanscapes-dispoition of global capital and how its source is mysterious

-ideoscapes-concatenations of images- directly poltical and frequently have to do with ideologies of states and countercultures

These scapes point to imagination or imagined worlds that take on an irregular shape and influence Print Capitalism or global interactions. Here I want to point out the argument of what makes a public sphere. Considering that these scapes are new ways in which the world is connected and the way the world is ordered, it in itself is a new public sphere.

Knowing Jodi Dean’s essay: The Internet is Not a Public Sphere, in combination with Habermas’ arguments on what makes a democratic public sphere I question whether this new imagined world is an accurate landscape or sphere. The problem is most obvious when we consider the ‘ethnoscape’. Tourists or immigrants may or may not have knowledge of technology or be capable of taking part in this imagined world. Therefore they may not be able to take part in Habermas’ public sphere as argued by Dean. The lack of need for face-to-face communication as articulated by Appadurai directly contrasts Dean’s argument that face-to-face communication is necessary for a democratic public sphere. These scapes clearly outline the changing spheres, caused by Print Capitalism; however is it true that imagined worlds or technology cannot be a true public sphere?

Cultural Identity: Reality or Façade?

I found Stuart Hall’s discussion of cultural identity as a production process to be especially eye opening. In our globalized world it is impossible to imagine that a nation can exist that has one unified identity. Even the constant flow of news media across national borders evokes a sense of identity-relation among the average citizen.

In order to better understand the idea of a cultural identity, I decided to look up one of the artists Karim cited in his chapter, “Mapping Diasporic Mediascapes”. Author and Professor, Bharati Mukherjee, was born in India and has lived in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Bharati uses her talent for writing to share her experience as an Indian woman and immigrant. Much of her writing is reflexive of her family’s journey to and from various countries to find a better life. As a child, Bharati returned to India with her family after having lived in Europe for three years. There she completed her Undergrad and also a Masters Degree. She received a scholarship to the United States and today teaches at Berkeley University, specializing in the field of Asian-American Literary Studies. Her experience as a ‘cultured’ woman gives her agency to talk about her experiences from a variety of perspectives. In a speech at Litquake 2007, Bharati shared her thoughts on having a homeland. She told the audience that she was “proud to call this city home”, home being San Francisco, California. Her storytelling is magnificent and would not be if it were not for her upbringing in India. She can identify a world beyond America. She knows what a life separate from commodities can look like. She is an animated writer, because she has lived an animated life.

I know it may sound cliché to say this, but in drawing attention to the struggles of her native homeland as well as the challenges of being an Indian woman, Bharati is able to be a voice for Indian woman. As a multicultural nation, Canada too is able to act as a voice on behalf of many subordinated people’s groups. I think diasporas in our country play a major role in influencing the way in which Canada operates at a national level. Our close ties to many countries around our world, do not merely stem from capital interests, but rather from the close ties between immigrant families and their homeland. This may sound idealistic, but I feel extremely blessed to be a part of people’s lives who have lived outside of the idea of modernism or postmodern. They literally do not know what it means to be modern; they simply know what it means to be Canadian. Just as Bharati’s life brings diversity to her writing, with diversity come opportunities to form community and reach out to groups of people who we would not otherwise have had contact with because of geographical restraints.

Living in My Own World: Attempting to Understand the Imagined Canadian Identity

I have never immigrated. I was born, raised, and have always lived in Canada. I know no other identity; however, it is debatable what kind of Canadian identity I identify with. For me, it is perplexing to think of what constitutes the Canadian identity. I know when I travel, I am proud to announce I am from Canada, and usually the people I meet on my travels reciprocally love that I am from Canada. Canada has this identity that is no doubt "out there" in the world; however, I don't think any of us really know exactly what constitutes that identity.

Maybe that is what makes Canadian identity so great - it cannot be described simply. But then, I get thinking that Canadian identity doesn't actually exist - rather an ideological identity subsists and has somehow been perpetuated worldwide. In my opinion, and from my experience, I am living in an imagined community called Canada. No one really knows what is Canadian identity: we are nice, multicultural, humble, nature-loving etc. To me, all of these words seem so full of ambiguity and they are just empty adjectives that do not really say much of anything.

This would be the point where an academic would delve further into the issue and try to unpack these words; however, I want to stop thinking about these intricacies because I fear I will overthink everything and then have an identity crisis – and I just don't want that right now! Perhaps this ideological Canadian identity that seems to exist throughout the world is precisely what holds together my Canadian identity. This imaginative community inspires me to live up to that glorious ideology. Unlike the unachievable American Dream, an advertising strategy designed to increase consumerism, I want to live up to the Canadian Ideal. I want to strive to be that nature-loving, humble, nice, caring, compassionate, lover-of-everyone-despite-their-differences, hockey-obsessed, open, welcoming, supportive humanitarian. In my mind, this is an ideology worth striving to achieve.

Perhaps I'll start to define these vague terms/values on my own through my own personal actions. I want to be recognized as an archetypal Canadian in relation to the Canadian identity that exists right now "out there" in the world – real or not. I find perplexing all of the issues of national borders and diasporas and assimilation and difference. I think I embrace the Canadian identity so much because it doesn’t necessarily have to “stop” in Canada – it can “flow” beyond borders as it promotes a world encouragement to embrace each other as global citizens and respect each other on the most basic level as human beings. Is it so bad to consider myself part of an imagined community – and be ok with it? Can I try to work to embody these figurative “Canadian” values? At this moment, I will instead ask, “Why not?” If I can lead by example and feel good about myself for doing it, all the while supposedly embracing “Canadianism”, then I’m ok with that!

Immigration VS Diasopora?

I’m having difficulty identifying the exact differences between diaspora and immigration. It seems to be an interesting negotiation of concepts and ideas. In Clifford’s article Diasporas, he defines the borders of diasporas and mentions several differences that distinguish immigration and diaspora. He claims, “…diasporic populations do not come from elsewhere the way that “immigrants” do” (307). This line was particularly confusing to me. While both groups come from elsewhere, there are clearly factors that define differences. Clifford mentions the fact that while immigrants may maintain nostalgia of home they essentially assimilate into their host population, especially in the case of immigrants in the United States. Diasporic cultures however, cannot be merged into their new host culture. Their identity reaches beyond the territory of their nation-state or place of origin. Resistance may even occur to the merging of host and home cultures.

I believe Clifford’s point that diasporic cultures “… are deployed in transnational networks built from multiple attachments, and they encode practices of accommodation with, as well as resistance to, host countries and their norms” (307) is very telling. Diasporic people never exist alone the way individual immigrants may. They are always connected to groups, who shave a common connection with a shared homeland and culture, with little to no assimilation. The accommodation with and resistance to host cultures creates more of a hybridity of culture then may be present for immigrant groups. Both diasporic and immigrant groups leave a homeland for a new land. However, it still remains difficult to note which immigration groups’ count as diasporas. I think that this distinction would differ depending on whom you ask. It also seems to change throughout history. For example the Irish immigration in the United States can be seen as a diaspora depending on the time, location, or person asked. Many Irish people maintained connection with their homeland and combined their cultural heritage with their host country.

Diasporas must have homes and communities away from home. In this way they are different than immigrants. While both may leave a homeland for various economic, political and/or personal reasons, immigrants are more likely to break ties with homeland, while diasporas maintain connections. It seems to be difficult to navigate the differences between diasporas and immigrants. It’s a fine line that often becomes blurred. Perhaps in our global society there are more diasporic groups than immigration groups, as countries such as Canada do not force assimilation as much as they used to. Whatever the case, the global flow of people, and the impact it has on those people and the places they go must continue to be examined in order to determine the cultural and personal significance of diasporic groups.

To leave or stay, that is the question.

Last weeks’ class discussion about diaspora and migration/immigration really intrigued me. As mentioned in the group discussion during class my parents and I were immigrants from West Africa, coming to Canada to settle and create a better life and future. My recent trip to West Africa last summer really got me thinking of returning to my roots with the knowledge and experience I have acquired from the Western part of the world. I would return back to the home land to not only share but put to use my skills to help better the lives of those who are less fortunate. This notion of returning back was something that was thought of during the class discussion last week. It wasn’t until last week when I really started looking into the possibilities of going back to West Africa to work and contribute to that society. Currently I have been looking into a lot of CIDA internships just to get a feel for it before I actually go ahead and make the big decision. Looking at the bigger picture I am trying to see how the transition and adaptation would be. I remember during Christina’s presentation she talked about identity transition as far as establishing or identifying your nationality when going back and forth to home land country. For example when I went to West Africa last summer I kept referring to myself as a Canadian even though my entire family continued to correct my ethnical identity. When I found myself back in Canada as usual I referred to myself as a Nigerian. I am not sure what type of role this will play or how I will be accepted if I choose to go to Africa. A lot of people have gone back to settle in Africa but have exploited and taken advantage of the peoples lack of education, therefore giving people down there a reason not to trust people who are actually there to help. I believe that it is easy to help a country when you have gained their trust and the only way to do this is to identify yourself with them, but how do I do that without losing my own sense of identity?