Abstract
Taking as its subject photographs, from a family archive, this chapter oscillates around the double diaspora’s twofold inclination towards progress and its vernacular modernity. Paradoxically, the diaspora are simultaneously pulled backwards, in what Parmar calls temporal synchronicity. Taking account of the storage of the visual material, the vastness of the archive and what the images depict, Parmar demonstrates a fetish of collected and hoarded commodities. Subsequently, she returns to the concept of trauma, drawing upon Sigmund Freud (1977) and Ranjana Khanna (2006). Parmar again comments upon Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s cookbook memoir, and too explores sartorial practices. Clothing is a powerful tool that reflects the vernacular modernity of the diaspora, as well as the cultural, political, gendered and generational competing allegiances that the twice-displaced community attend to. Parmar formulates an understanding of how performative dress can conceive identity, regional and national, not only in the family frame, but, as per the previous chapter, on the dance floor.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Modernity in the subcontinent has manifested itself not only in the production and consumption of visual material, but, for instance, through the design and manufacturing of textiles and the trading of spices. My explorations of culinary and sartorial practices can be understood as relationally representative of these historical innovative industries. For scholarship on sartorial practices, see Breward et al. (2010) who highlight the impact of Indian fashions and designs, such as the paisley pattern or the chintz, in British style. They too outline the techniques that the Indians pioneered, and the British were quick to imitate.
- 2.
I offer deep gratitude to my mother, Bindu Parmar, who was integral to this collection process.
- 3.
Hirsch and Spitzer’s (2010) exploration of collective family memory, sometimes via photographic analysis, has influenced my approach in this chapter. Ananya J. Kabir’s and Jay Prosser’s works on photography, as cited later, have also been significant.
- 4.
A further major study of South Asian visual culture is Jain’s (2007) exploration of Indian calendar art.
- 5.
Sadly my aunt, Indu Masi Chauhan (b. 1939), passed away during the course of this research, in 2016. Her husband, Raman Masa Chauhan (b. 1934), passed in 2005.
- 6.
An additional child, a son, was born later.
- 7.
This relative is called Raman Masa. ‘Masa’ translates from Gujarati to English as: mother’s sister’s husband.
- 8.
Kuhn too discusses the family album, and in these contexts of ‘cultural construction of family’ (2002, 20). This work will be of use throughout the chapter.
- 9.
Later I address a critical gap in the sartorial preferences of the female diasporic subject.
- 10.
The simplicity of this ensemble is apparent if compared with Navratri dress, as demonstrated in my previous chapter.
- 11.
The significance of the less commonly worn Punjabi suit is illustrated further along in this discussion. Whilst India cannot be perceived as a singular uniform entity, there is some pattern whereby often men favour Western dress, and women more often wear ‘Indian dress’. There is some exploration here between the sartorial preferences of those in the double diaspora and those in India; however, no research, to my knowledge, on this subject exists, and here is a lacuna which requires attention.
- 12.
It is worth noting that boys, unlike girls, follow the example of their paternal elders, wearing Western dress. Generally, this includes shorts or trousers, and shirts.
- 13.
See Chatterjee (1993) for a discussion around female gender, Indian identity and modernity.
- 14.
Holland notes that it is the man’s role ‘to handle the apparatus that controls the image, to point, frame and shoot’ (1991, 7). It is within the male repertoire to manage the technological quality of photography, and this is yet another signification of his modernity.
- 15.
Rait, in Sikh women in England: Their religious and cultural beliefs and social practices, describes the normative dress of the female Sikh community in Britain, who are predominantly from the Punjab, as consisting of the Punjabi suit (2005, 68). Whilst the name of the garment would suggest as much, Rait makes lucid the association of the Punjabi suit with ‘Punjabiness’. She too documents the specificity of this garment, the sari and the lehenga, which make useful reference points (68–9).
- 16.
The compulsion for women to undertake certain roles and responsibilities might well be explored as oppressive. Of course, historically, for example, during partition, the designation of national honour, pride and shame to the female body led to the appalling abuse of women. There is no doubt about the oppressive nature of gendered roles here. In the examples I explore, the agency available to women in their status as cultural disseminator is more ambivalent. There is certainly an adherence to normative gendered behaviour; however, complicity in these behavioural rituals is undetermined.
- 17.
Kabir’s commentary in Territory of Desire (2009) is through visual material, like my own here; however, there the commentaries revolve around conflict.
- 18.
Bhabha (1986, 148–72) too engages the concept of the fetish. He argues for a reading of the stereotype via a fetishism/phobia theoretical framework. Bhabha’s thesis here revolves around Freud’s notion of the fetish, and in particular is interested in the colonial stereotype as fashioned by racial difference, rather than sexual difference.
- 19.
Arnold, Everyday technology: Machines and the making of India’s modernity (2013) explores how small-scale technologies became readily integrated into the Indian technological repertoire, during colonial times. He comments upon how ‘dowry gifting was one of the most important social mechanisms by which new consumer goods were disseminated among middle-class households in India’ (81), whilst exploring the impact of these everyday technologies on the social system and gender norms. Clearly, the practice, prolific in India, of disseminating everyday technologies, via the dowry system, was transported to East Africa.
- 20.
The implicit relationship between photography and loss, and indeed autobiography, is lucidly investigated by Prosser (2005).
- 21.
The metaphor of the suitcase appears elsewhere in reflections on the twice migrant, for example, in the 2012 ‘Flight to Greenham’ exhibition, which marked the 40th anniversary of Idi Amin’s expulsion order, curated by Sunil Shah. A digital tour of the exhibition is available online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDWseognDho [accessed 8 August 2018].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Parmar, M. (2019). Picturing the Modern Self: Vernacular Modernity and Temporal Synchronicity. In: Reading Cultural Representations of the Double Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18083-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18083-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18082-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18083-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)