Oldal 155 [155]
THIRD SPACE: AN INTERCULTURAL NEGOTIATION OF SOUTH ÁSIAN DIASPORA IN CANADA
membership and collective identity.?? The “third culture”, which is formed at
intersections, can seep into mainstream consciousness and evoke questions
crucial to understand the Canadian mosaic: What does it mean to be a
Canadian? What does it mean to be bilingual or multilingual? What does it
mean to be multigenerational, multi-ethnical and multicultural?
The exploration of the cultural production of diasporic cinema, media and
other artistic expression is often the construction of postcolonial cultural
hybridity and Third Space. Cultural productions of the diasporic are often
seen through a “narrative pattern,” which Bhabha envisages as “part of a
process of choice and judgment." And that sense of choice and judgment
is lost very often with generalized terms like cosmopolitan, planetary or
nomadism."! Authenticity for minority representation in Western mass¬
media culture is especially perpetuated by the American negation of cultural
knowledge produced in Ihird Space. Ihe intercultural communication
between ethnic minorities and majoritarian Western cultures as discussed
above is a process rooted in “ambiguity” and “ambivalence.” In his theory of
Orientalism, Edward Said saw “ambivalence” relating to a colonial framework
that has historically perceived non-Western cultures through “exoticism.”
The making of “Others” — people hailing from the Eastern world of Asia,
North Africa and the Middle East — as inferior to rational and patriarchal
Western societies. When applied by post-colonial cultural studies in studying
contemporary Western societies, this framework helps us understand
popular culture and mediascape that often perpetuat “Eurocentric” ideals.
In the South Asian postcolonial context, it’s the basis of socio-economic and
intellectual classes, for example, one’s adoption and usage of English over
native South Asian tongue is often encouraged. Or, it’s the favouring of light
and fair skin over a dark/dusky complexion. Mimicking Anglophone culture
and physical beauty standards is deeply woven in the fabric of modern South
Asian postcolonial societies and is fervently displayed in mass-media culture
in films, TV shows, and advertisements. I see personal poetics as a profound
decolonization philosophy of South Asian belonging in cosmopolitans of
South Asia as well as the Anglophone West.
2 Irving, Mass Media, 223.
30 Homi K. Bhabha, Diaspora and Home: An Interview with Homi K. Bhabha, Interview by
Klaus Stierstorfer, Degruyter.com, 7 December 2017.
31 Bhabha, Diaspora and Home, 2017.