| Summary: | Impersonating Identity in Spaces of Difference is an ALTERnative discourse of
dis/ruption, decolonization, deconstruction....Writing on the b/orders of theories,
disciplines, genres, cultures....this re/search weaves together personal, familial, and
societal stories of silence and silencings. By subverting conventional academic texts
and hegemonic frameworks of Canadian "MultiCULTural institutions and Canadian
"MultiCULTural society," this subaltern re/search claims a space for marginalized
voices. Conventional ways of knowing, being, becoming are generatively disRupted
in order to create awareness of the continuing legacies of colonialism, modernity,
patriarchy...and to highlight the urgent need to provide genuine spaces of "belonging"
that inclusively honour and respect the gifts of all individuals.
Entangled in the in/visible hierarchical realities of "Canadianness," this in/quiry
articulates decolonizing resistance. The layers of the impure academic textual body
perform the multiple fragmented intertextual layers of the improper Indocanadian/
Can-indian body creating em(bodi)ed re-imag(e)inings of epistemology and
pedagogy. This tense, restless landscape of multi-languages, multi-genres, multimeanings,
multi-truths is an inter-Ruption of predetermined b/orders and
predetermined bodies of predetermined purity, in a world of ever-changing
multiplicity.
Drawing on "difference" in multiCULTuralism, language, voice, and identity, this
performative work travels in and out of questions of absence, "hybridity," foreignness,
loss, displacement, marginalization, patriarchy, colonialism, modernity....In this
powerful and liberating form of non-traditional in/quiry, meaning making takes
precedence over conventional stylistic or pre-established structures and
acknowledges personal "ethnic" experience as a valuable form of reliable "academic"
knowledge. This trans-disciplinary, transformative, transcultural...in/quiry disRupts
traditional hegemonic narratives and challenges the conventional notions of re/search
and writing through its form and content. Through the braided weaving of English,
French and Punjabi, personal stories, familial narratives, prose, letters, e-mails, cross cultural conversations, visual imagery, historical documents, "subtexts," "surtexts,"
intertexts, collaborative texts...undermine and upset hegemonic linguistic norms.
Fiction, fantasy, History, herstory, theirstories, memory...are juxtaposed through mixed
non-linear genres and codes in protest of violent acts of com(form)ity, exclusion and
censorship. Stories of India and Canada find themselves interwoven unexpectedly,
betraying the lies and the truths of patriarchy, colonialism, modernity,
multiCULTuralism, transCULTuralisms...disrupting clean, linear readings of writing
and of research. This experiment with nonstructure and typography attempts to
actively decolonize, deconstruct/re-construct imposed academic and social identities
in a more meaningful way and provide readers with a sense of living in the
"transculturality" of the "diasporic in-between."
Only by provoking a critical, cross-cultural "INNERstanding" of History, POWer,
systemic marginalization, colonialism and modernity can we begin to relationally take
on the collective response-abilty for social justice in policy and practice ~ in the word
and in the wor(l)d. === Education, Faculty of === Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of === Graduate
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