A Phenomenological Reading of Temporality and Natality in Relation to the Diasporic Indian Reception of the Bollywood Text with Reference to Mauritius

Farhad Abdool Kader Sulliman Khoyratty

A Phenomenological Reading of Temporality and Natality in Relation to the Diasporic Indian Reception of the Bollywood Text with Reference to Mauritius

In: Diasporic Choices

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Farhad Abdool Kader Sulliman Khoyratty

Farhad Abdool Kader Sulliman Khoyratty
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 21–34

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848881877_004

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Diasporas are in essence (sometimes structured, generally reactive) existential reconstructions - reheated curries that taste different, temporally alienating revisits, re-accorded historical discontinuities. They are above all references to temporality (Heidegger) and attempts at giving birth to the new (Arendt’s natality) that proceed by disrupting given temporalities. According to Vijay Mishra, Bollywood cinema is a medium used by the Indian diaspora to alleviate feelings of isolation from their country of origin. The mid-nineties of the twentieth century reflected a shift in the central concern of the Bollywood text from the India of the villager or the urban working-class to the NRI (non-resident Indian). The experience of being NRI has been transposed onto existing Bollywood fantasy structures of success, involved in the logic of imagining contemporary economic exilés as materialistically successful but nostalgic of loss of identity, a pragmatic welding of tradition and modernity. Many will argue that Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge started that trend. There was a quick follow-up with other major films. This paper will argue that the Bollywood text in a diasporic Indian context has often been appropriated by diasporic Indians to outperform time as defined by the dominant colonial discourses (in the Barthesian sense that receiving a text is part of writing but also in that its very textual tempo reflects the historical displacement of the diaspora by writing out its possibility), often uncovering an angst over the futural projection of Indianness over generations. Instead, the new Bollywood engagement with the diasporic Indian showcases a new triumphalist attempt at incorporating the temporal dialectic within a relatively stable temporal framework. Mauritius, with a majority population of an Indian diaspora, both dominated (present-as-past) and dominant (past-as-present) is one reference for exploring the nature of such a flux.

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Diasporic Choices

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848881877

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 2013

Subjects
- Social Sciences
  - Comparative Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies

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A Phenomenological Reading of Temporality and Natality in Relation to the Diasporic Indian Reception of the Bollywood Text with Reference to Mauritius

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Diasporic Choices

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