When Amy and I divided the chapters to cover in class, I blindly chose part III, without having read either section yet. I find it funny and unfitting, in retrospect, and therefore challenging that I chose a to present a section of the book that argues for more research on identity politics. In short, I seemingly spent my entire Masters education arguing against identity politics and for a more class-based and materialist approach to understanding politics, literature, and the world.
Ignacio’s article *attempts* to illuminate the liberating potential of online, diasporic communities to renegotiate identity from the (post) colonial contexts from which it emerges. Strikingly absent from this article is any mention of data. From her alleged textual analysis of a Filipino cultural website, she concludes that computer-mediated communication could help members of a diaspora better understand their post- or neocolonial situation and can serve as a possible site for broader organizing and community formation. It is difficult to refute her findings since she does not show her data; this may be a convenient rhetorical move on her behalf. Yet I am willing to challenge her conclusion based on the following three tenets: 1) this dialogue about reconceiving identity outside of the definitions set forth by colonial hegemony most likely takes place among the most socio-economically privileged members of the diaspora and elites in the nation of origin. The results of such dialogue may only suggest “Filipinoness” in ways that reflect the experience of middle-class, urban and cosmopolitan elites. What about the experience of information and resource poor Filiponos who do not have access to the Internet to take part in these conversations? What about the experience of the agrarian Filipino? It seems like such a project would write out such experiences of “Filipinoness.” 2). If, as the researcher admits, identity is unstable, what is the point of (re)defining Filipinoness? And finally 3). such a project that seeks to stabilize a singular identity, namely what it means to be Filipino seems very conservative. It is seemingly good willed to wrestle definitions of Filipinoness from colonial legacy, in which it is subjugated as something “Other” than normal, but doesn’t the reinscription of a new Filipino identity create other Others, such as for those whom are excluded from the dialogue because they lack adequate resources, reliable internet connectivity, and because they are working?
Again, in short, I am daughter of Sephardic Jewish immigrants. I understand and have lived cultural difference and colonial hegemony, yet I feel that there is nothing stable upon which Jewish identity rests, and that it is a foolish waste of time to rally around a conjured identity of “jewishness.” I suppose, according to a postcolonial perspective, that I am living in a diaspora in the wilderness of the west, but I don’t want to go “home” to Africa or Jerusalem in any literal or figurative sense.
1 comment:
When Amy and I divided the chapters to cover in class, I blindly chose part III, without having read either section yet. I find it funny and unfitting, in retrospect, and therefore challenging that I chose a to present a section of the book that argues for more research on identity politics. In short, I seemingly spent my entire Masters education arguing against identity politics and for a more class-based and materialist approach to understanding politics, literature, and the world.
Ignacio’s article *attempts* to illuminate the liberating potential of online, diasporic communities to renegotiate identity from the (post) colonial contexts from which it emerges. Strikingly absent from this article is any mention of data. From her alleged textual analysis of a Filipino cultural website, she concludes that computer-mediated communication could help members of a diaspora better understand their post- or neocolonial situation and can serve as a possible site for broader organizing and community formation. It is difficult to refute her findings since she does not show her data; this may be a convenient rhetorical move on her behalf. Yet I am willing to challenge her conclusion based on the following three tenets: 1) this dialogue about reconceiving identity outside of the definitions set forth by colonial hegemony most likely takes place among the most socio-economically privileged members of the diaspora and elites in the nation of origin. The results of such dialogue may only suggest “Filipinoness” in ways that reflect the experience of middle-class, urban and cosmopolitan elites. What about the experience of information and resource poor Filiponos who do not have access to the Internet to take part in these conversations? What about the experience of the agrarian Filipino? It seems like such a project would write out such experiences of “Filipinoness.” 2). If, as the researcher admits, identity is unstable, what is the point of (re)defining Filipinoness? And finally 3). such a project that seeks to stabilize a singular identity, namely what it means to be Filipino seems very conservative. It is seemingly good willed to wrestle definitions of Filipinoness from colonial legacy, in which it is subjugated as something “Other” than normal, but doesn’t the reinscription of a new Filipino identity create other Others, such as for those whom are excluded from the dialogue because they lack adequate resources, reliable internet connectivity, and because they are working?
Again, in short, I am daughter of Sephardic Jewish immigrants. I understand and have lived cultural difference and colonial hegemony, yet I feel that there is nothing stable upon which Jewish identity rests, and that it is a foolish waste of time to rally around a conjured identity of “jewishness.” I suppose, according to a postcolonial perspective, that I am living in a diaspora in the wilderness of the west, but I don’t want to go “home” to Africa or Jerusalem in any literal or figurative sense.
Post a Comment