Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity

Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity challenges conventional understandings of identity based on notions of nation and culture as bounded or discrete. Through careful examinations of various transnational, hybrid, border, and diasporic forces and practices, these essays push at the edge of cultural studies, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory and raise crucial questions about ethnographic methodology. This volume exemplifies a cross-disciplinary cultural studies and a concept of culture rooted in lived experience as well as textual readings. Anthropologists and scholars from related fields deploy a range of methodologies and styles of writing to blur and complicate conventional dualisms between authors and subjects of research, home and away, center and periphery, and first and third world. Essays discuss topics such as Rai, a North African pop music viewed as westernized in Algeria and as Arab music in France; the place of Sephardic and Palestinian writers within Israel’s Ashkenazic-dominated arts community; and the use and misuse of the concept “postcolonial” as it is applied in various regional contexts. In exploring histories of displacement and geographies of identity, these essays call for the reconceptualization of theoretical binarisms such as modern and postmodern, colonial and postcolonial. It will be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars and students concerned with postmodern and postcolonial theory, ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies. Contributors. Norma AlarcÓn, Edward M. Bruner, Nahum D. Chandler, Ruth Frankenberg, Joan Gross, Dorinne Kondo, Kristin Koptiuch, Smadar Lavie, Lata Mani, David McMurray, Kirin Narayan, Greg Sarris, Ted Swedenburg

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity / Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg Living With Miracles: The Politics and Poetics of Writing American Indian Resistance and Identity / Greg Sarris Anzaldua's Frontera: Inscribing Gynetics / Norma AlarcÓn Blowups in the Borderzones: Third World Israeli Authors' Gropings for Home / Smadar Lavie The Narrative Production of "Home," Community, and Political Identity in Asian American Theater / Dorinne Kondo Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap, and Franco-Maghrebi Identities / Joan Gross, David McMurray, and Ted Swedenburg Tourism in the Balinese Borderzone / Edward M. Bruner Songs Lodged in Some Hearts: Displacements of Women's Knowledge in Kangra / Kirin Narayan "Cultural Defense" and Criminological Displacements: Gender, Race, and (Trans)Nation in the Legal Surveillance of U.S. Diaspora Asians / Kristin Koptiuch The Figure of the X: An Elaboration of the Du Boisian Autobiographical Example / Nahum D. Chandler Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race, "Postcoloniality," and the Politics of Location / Ruth Frankenberg and Lata Mani Bibliography Index Contributors

About the Author :
Smadar Lavie is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Critical Theory at the University of California at Davis. Ted Swedenburg is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo.

Review :
“Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity is informed not only by detailed attention to specific case studies or theoretical analyses, but also by an awareness of theoretical work in several fields which allows the highlighting of points and circuits of connections across disciplines and areas. This collection succeeds in ways which are thought provoking and likely to lead to vital discussions across disciplines.”- David Lloyd, University of California, Berkeley “For me the strength of this collection lies in its various attempts to experiment in proseform and to thus exemplify in practice the boldness of theory required by this awesome and treacherous field. It therewith helps us all in furthering the bustling heterogeneity of displacing-disciplinarity minimally demanded by its momentous subjects and subject-matters.”-Michael Taussig, Columbia University