Article published in "Heritage and Development in the Mission of the Church" (Thiruvalla: The Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, 2011)
Border Lives and Border God:
Diaspora Reconfigures Heritage, Mission
Rev. Y. T. Vinayaraj[1]
It is my privilege and honor to write an article in the festschrift volume that celebrates the life and vision of Dr. Joseph Mar Thoma Metropolitan. It is Metropolitan Joseph Mar Thoma who encouraged me to pursue my theological studies. It reveals his hospitality towards the unattended and his respect towards the voices of differences that he believed to be helpful for the enrichment of the mission and theology of the church. I always admire his love and care towards me as a son of an evangelist, a youth from the mission field, and a minister of the Mar Thoma Church. The title Tradition and Modernity is appropriate for this festschrift, as it encapsulates the Metropolitan’s perceptions and perspectives on heritage which is transcending, transgressing, and open-ended. This article comes out of my recent experience with the Mar Thoma diaspora communities in the United States of America
“Where do you come from?” I asked to one veteran gentleman, during my visit to one of the Mar Thoma congregations in the United States of America. Instead of replying to my question, he began to sing an old Malayalam song; “oridathu jananam, oridathu maranam, chumalil jeevitha bharam…” (Birth and death happen in different places; the only thing that is left in the shoulder is the burden of life). “Achen (pastor),” he continued, “it is not fare to ask such a question to people like me who have been living here for the last four decades as citizens of this country. Better you ask the question “where are you between?” Of course, migrancy is a border life experience that finds its location ‘in-between’. Diaspora as it is called today, in fact signals a new mode of being in the contemporary world. It is a new location that defines life, ethics, aesthetics and politics in the postmodern/ postcolonial/ post-industrial context. As far as the migrant Christian communities are concerned, diaspora constitutes the theological location through which they try to reconfigure their heritage, mission and theology in a ‘foreign’ land. It is not intended here to discuss the issues and problems of migration; rather to attend the complexity and heterogeneity of the category- “diaspora” and to offer a theological appraisal for that living condition.
Diaspora as a mode of being in the world
Due to the impact of globalization the cultural formations are inherently glocalized[2] today. ‘Crossing the border’ has become a common phrase that signals the new aesthetics of human life. The words such as hybridity, liminality, interdisciplinarity, de-territorialization, trans-national, trans-gender so on and so forth have become very common and familiar in this context. Social theories of ‘post-isms’ such as postcolonialism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, post feminism, post ethnicity…inform us further that the cultural or ethnic identity is no longer exists as fixed or essentialist or localized; rather it must always be mixed, relative and inventive.[3] It marks the specificity of the contemporary cultural/ political life that attends or depends on the issues of migration, multi-culturalism, transnationalism. Hybridity-the diasporic condition reveals a new mode of our being in the ‘globalized’ world. Diaspora is not just yet another social location; rather it is a significant location through which we look at problems and possibilities of a particular mode of existence in the world.[4]
Diaspora is the word used by the people living outside their country of origin to describe themselves. In the Greek root as it is used in the Bible, it refers to the scattered Christian communities. Robin Cohen defines diaspora as the communities of people living together in one country who acknowledge that ‘the old country’ –a notion often buried deep in language, religion, custom or folklore-always has some claim on their loyalty, emotions, identity and subjectivity.[5] In this sense each member of that diasporic community is shared a common story (memory) of their past migration history and a sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar background. Sometimes it is a political strategy to forging solidarities against the continuing racial oppression in the new country.
As the Bible testifies, migration is not a new problem. It has always been in the cultural history of human beings. The Bible talks about many stories of migration, exile, exodus, and mass displacement. But the issue of migration in this globalized era is totally different from the biblical context, and hence the old solutions are not tenable. The new communicative systems and other technological advancements have already transgressed the issues of space and time. The distance between the old and new territories is being lessened and thus memory has been tainted by new simulacra.[6] Many of the migrants have found ‘home’ in the new land and for them ‘home country’ is not at all nostalgic because of the new possibilities of the new spaces. However, the diaspora identities are not homogenous but varied and contested in accordance with generational/ gender differences. The younger generation may not be sharing the same passion to the ‘story of the past migration’ and ‘old country.’ Thus diaspora identities are contested identities which must be attended differently. Another category which is more useful here is the condition of diaspora-hybridity.
Hybridity- living ‘in-between’
The experiences of living in diasporas have animated much recent postcolonial literature and theory. The post colonialists use the word hybridity to describe the “betwixt-and-between” culture of the diasporized communities.[7] According to postcolonial theories, hybridity does not mean any kind of miscegenation or mixed breeding; rather it is an intermediary location where the self and the other re-locate themselves in proximity, alterity and difference.[8] It is to reject the single or unified identity and to give preference for multiple cultural locations and identities. Homi Bhabha, one of the prominent proponents of this concept, calls hybridity as ‘the third space’ or possibility ‘in-between’ that we find the words with which we can speak of ourselves and others.”[9] By the ‘third space’, Bhabha means to ‘living on both sides of the symbolic fault line without allegiance to any.’ For him it is a possibility of both reconciliation and resistance by which the interlocutors deconstruct their subjectivities and differences in a dialogical proximity and hospitality. It does not speak about the bleedings of ‘encounter’ but honors the wisdom in its ‘mutuality.’ Thus the category-hybridity is being used here as a location or passage of fraternity, proximity, and hospitality.
Here, I would like to discuss some of the special features of the Diaspora through which it explain its complexity and heterogeneity.
“Not-at-Home-ness”: Home is in the making
Home gives us a sense of our place in the world. To be in ‘home’ is to occupy a location where we are welcomed, where we can be with people very much like ourselves. But what does it mean to the immigrants who live far from their ‘own’ lands of birth or origin? Diaspora theorists such as Avtar Brah and Robin Cohen propose that the idea of ‘home’ is a mythic one. In their perception, “it is a place of desire and longing that sits oddly with the present, chosen location of the immigrant. In this sense it is a place of no-return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as the place of “origin.”[10]
This “un-home-like” existence is well explained by Sebastian Chrest-Jones, one of the main characters in Julia Kristeva’s novel Murder In Byzantium: “I neither fled nor chose. And yet in my home I am not at home. And when I travel abroad I recognize on the faces of strangers the familiar look of being nowhere. Is it really how they are or only my momentary impression as an uprooted passerby? I am of no place, as for time; perhaps I am of a time that shrinks into something outside time.”[11] The potentiality of this notion “not-at-home-ness” is that it speaks of open spaces and burst limits in contrary to our traditional notion of fixed space-home. It reconfigures our borders and envisages new spaces, new relationships, and new homes on the roads. In the above mentioned novel, towards the end of the narrative, Sebastian re-visits or re-locates his initial concept of home and concludes: “My home is on the road (In via in patria) and with strangers, who like me, belonging nowhere.”[12] Home is in the making as we encounter the strangers in our journeys. According to Derrida, it is the coming of the Other, the stranger, the messiah, the impossibility that determines our homeness.[13]
What is our heritage? Derrida speaks on heritage: “heritage, in order to save its life, demands reinterpretation, critique, displacement, that is an active intervention, so that a transformation worthy of the name might take place: so that something might happen, an event, some history, an unforeseeable future-to-come.”[14] The enclosure of heritage rejects its possibility of blossoming. Thus, keep it open so that the impossible would come in to it and make it a fragrance for others. The discourse on heritage thus transcends our ‘memory of the past’ and locates itself in a new spectrality of time and space-a transition from roots to routes.[15] Diasporic Identities: “To be in-beyond”
Stuart Hall in his studies on diasporized people, proposes a ‘real heterogeneity of interests and identities’ and argues for ‘new ethnicities’ that deny ideas of ‘essential’ cultural/ethnic identity.[16] Identity or heritage or inheritance is not given but a discursive formation. It is well explained by Kwame Appiah while he talks about the black identity in a postcolonial context: “we are all already contaminated by each other.”[17] It reminds us that there is no ‘pure’/ ‘uncontaminated’ identity or culture which survived the inevitable interaction or mediation especially in a globalized context.[18] Hybridity or non-essentialist diasporic identity, as seen in the postcolonial theory, is the answer to the dangers of cultural binarism (us/ them) and the fundamentalist urge to seek ‘pure’ cultural forms.
While Bhabha defining the notion of hybridity- “the third space” or “the space in-between,” he tries to articulate a new notion of identity-“to be in-beyond,” “not based on fundamentalist exotism or any kind of eclectic identity of the multi-culturalism.” This non-fixity/ fluidity of identity is well explained by Judith Butler, a postmodern feminist theoretician. For Butler, identity is performatively constructed by the very “expressions” that we said to be its results.[19] The potentiality of this notion of identity is that, as Foucault reiterates, the possibility of being other than this. The postmodern psychoanalysts design the postmodern self as “one self but many stories.” For Kristeva, identity is a “signifying practice” in which the subject makes it intelligible through its words and acts.[20] According to these perceptions of identity, diaspora identities are “to be in-beyond” and capable enough to re-draw itself through the “signifying practices” of counter ritualistic re-memories, creative hermeneutical engagements, and interactions of hospitality and fraternity.
Liminality: Life at the cutting edge
Liminality is another word which the postmodernists use to denote the diasporic life condition. Liminality means “a threshold’, the life at the cutting edge or ‘in-between.’ It signals the temporality of space, time and self. It is an experience of ‘in-between’ pain and hope, being nomad and belonging. It is a location in-between ‘native’ and ‘foreign.’ It is the space in between self and other, subject and object, spirituality and materiality, and in short life and death. Thus liminality is sacred, alluring, dynamic and at the same time dangerous.
The liminality of time is the eschatological time when the impossibility comes into our being. It is an open-ended space. It is a location where one can have alternative ways of saying, doing, being, engendering and inspiring. That is why Catherine Keller re-imagines apocalypse as the kaleidoscope that reconfigures our time, space and self.[21] Each moment is an eschatological moment in which we see the infinity at the face of the other.[22] Liminality, according to postmodern theology is not a state of confusion and pain but it is the ‘dis/closure’ of new passage and hope. As Lux Xun, a Chinese philosopher of the 20th century Said: “Hope can be neither affirmed nor denied. Hope is like a path in the country side. Originally there was no path – yet, as people are walking all the time in the same spot, a way appears.”[23]
Towards a Diaspora theology: Border lives and border God
The task before the Diaspora Theology is to attend the hybridity, liminality and the creativity of the diasporized identity. The Bible refers to the varied experiences of diaspora such as Jewish experiences of nomadism, mass displacement of the slaves, and scattered experiences of early Christian communities. The biblical understanding of the exilic people and their concept of the journeying God become pertinent in the Theology of Diaspora. By drawing the Jewish figure of Shekhinah who embodies precisely the notion of moving divine presence, the Bible alludes to the concept of ‘divine not-at-homeness.’ The Shekhinah God is the one who accompanies the exiled and dispossessed of the land. Becoming a ‘tent-like divine mobile dwelling,’ Shekhinah becomes a ‘home away from home’ or ‘home in the making’ or ‘home on the road’ for the displaced people. Shekhinah invites us to explore notions of exile and home through a concept of God who is outside God-self, and so a sense of identity and home found in the not-at-homeness.
Shekhinah is the divine sanctuary for the exiled Israelites, in which they continue their anti-imperialistic practices to keep transformation of their covenantal subjectivities. Through counter liturgical and social institutional practices, they were able to uphold the counter imagination of their social existence while keeping it open ended for being hospitable to the strangers. While discussing about his migrant Latino spirituality and theology, Elaine Padilla explains this more clearly: “The hope in relation to Shekhinah emerges as a nuanced understanding of the biblical promise for a home with a vision for a worldly hospitality of inclusion that is tightly knit to a nomadic sense of self.”[24]
The coming of Jesus is witnessed by the evangelist John translates that ‘he tabernacled with us’ (John 1: 14). The ‘tent-like dwelling’ signals a ‘liminal God’--a ‘border God’ who becomes a passage of hope to those who live in the margins or borders. Vitor Westhelle designs the cross of Jesus as the unveiling of a border God/ broken God who is in-between time and space, life and death, and pain and hope.[25] Vitor contents, “it is the moment of divine braking, the cross of Jesus stand at the hinge of transition.”[26] The book of Revelation is actually a perception of the displaced or the marginalized on the possibility of life at the cutting edge of imperialism, domination and death. It informs us that eschaton is the liminal space in which it dis/closes an opening- a threshold to new self, new other, new earth and new heaven.
Conclusion
Diaspora theology no longer asks “where do you come from?” but asks “where you between?” It attends the diasporic ‘in-between’ life. It is a border life at the same time a bridge in-between. Diasporic identity is “to be in-beyond”; not left behind but in the midst of it. Diaspora Theology envisages a ‘border God’ who is present in the liminality/ marginality of human life. It is the place of eschaton in which we find the infinity at the face of the other. Thus, for diaspora theology, mission and being become inseparable. It is the threshold to which our theology, missiology, ecclesiology are being interrogated, reconfigured and transformed.
Mar Thoma church that inherits a rich legacy of hybridity of East and West, Orthodox and Anglican, mission field and diaspora, Tradition and Modernity embodies a possibility of TRANS-localization and TRANS-formation. It is well evident in its recent routes to the rest of the world through its missiological engagements and the migration of its members. Diasporas, hence, signal new faces of the Mar Thoma Church through which it re-articulates and witnesses its heritage, mission, and theology to the world Christian community in the postmodern context. But the question still remains: “Diaspora where are you between?”
[1]Rev. Y. T. Vinayaraj is an ordained minister of the Mar Thoma Church, India. Currently he is a doctoral student at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in the field of Systematic Theology and Cultural Studies.
[2] Robertson suggests that the term ‘glocalization’ more adequately describes the relationship between the local and the global as one of interaction and interpenetration rather than of binary opposites. See Robertson, Roland (1995), ‘Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’ in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities, London
[3] Clifford(1988:10) cited by Marwan M. Kraidy, “The Global, the Local, and the Hybrid: A Native Ethnography of Glocalization” in Ethnographic Research, A Reader, ed., Stephanie Taylor (London
[4]Russell King, John Connell and Paul white (eds.), Writing Across Worlds: Literature and Migration (Routledge: 1995), xv
[5]Robin Cohen, Global diasporas: An Introduction (UCL Press, 1997), ix
[6]Simulacra is the term coined by Jean Baudrillard, by which he explained that our contemporary world is constituted by the media with its ‘floating signifiers’. Thus the contemporary world that is presented to us is an unreally real world. See Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 170
[7]Hybridity gained its traction from Homi Bhabha, who used it to refer to the conflicted ways in which Indians under British colonial rule internalized British and Indian identities. For more details see, Homi. K. Bhabha, “The Third Space,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed., Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990). But this category is being used here just to draw out the cultural interaction between the guest and host communities rather than the power equations embedded in it.
[8]This word is misleading if it has racial or biological connotations, or if it suggests that, culturally speaking, a person is combining two pure traditions into one impure tradition. All cultural traditions are attempts to creatively syncratize diverse, pre-existing ideas and practices from within or beyond their geographical levels in to complex wholes. For an interesting experience sharing of this hybrid identity read, Jay McDaniel, “I Listen, Therefore I Am: An Asian American Approach to Post-Materialist Living”, Dialog, Vol. 49:9, Dec 2010, P.323-331.
[9] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994)
[10]Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (Routledge, 1997), 192
[11] Julia Kristeva, Murder In Byzantium (New York : Columbia University
[12] Julia Kristeva, Murder In Byzantium, 217.
[13] Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000)
[14] Jacques Derrida., For What Tomorrow…Translated by Jeff Fort (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), 4
[15] I borrowed this idea from Paul Gilroy. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (Verso, 1993).
[16] Stuart Hall., Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed., David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 441-9
[17] Cited by Marwan M. Kraidy, “The Global, The Local, and the Hybrid” Op.cit.
[18]While attending the issue of the non-fixity of subjectivity, Deleuze and Guattari talks about Nomads. For them, a nomad is someone who lives in an open space without restriction. Deleuze and Guattari, Nomadology: The War Machine, 1986. Erni calls them as the impossible subjects (Erni, 19890. For Allor, nomads have no physical space, only discursive positions and hence they are cultural chameleons(Allor, 1988).Abu Lughod uses the word ‘halfies’ to refer to people whose national or cultural identity is mixed by virtue of migration, overseas education, or parentage(Abu Lughod, 1991: 137). See, John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000)
[19] Cited from A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, eds., Raman Selden et.al (London: Pearson, 2005), 211
[20] Cited from A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, eds., Raman Selden et.al (London: Pearson, 2005), 211
[21] Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996)
[22] This idea is well explained by Emmanuel Levinas. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. By Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesene University Press, 1969)
[23]Cited from Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), xii
[24]Elaine Padilla, “Border-crossing and Exile, A Latina’s Theological Encounter with Shekhinah”, The Ecumenical Review of the World Council of Churches, (Geneva: Dec 2009), 381-386
[25]Vitor Westhelle, The Scandalous God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 157
[26] Vitor Westhelle, The Scandalous God, 157
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.