Home as/is the Performance of Transnational Culture and the Imagined ‘Homeland’
摘要
The idea and experience of ‘home’ has a special significance for communities that have migrated and translocated to a new homescape. The ways that ‘home’ becomes the space/place where culture and identity are performed and negotiated in relationship to a real and imagined ‘homeland’ left behind offer an investigation into different types of performances, including the performance of culture, language, and heritage within the diasporic home. The chapter establishes a transnational dialogue by focusing on the case studies of the Punjabi community in Southall, UK, and the Tamil community in Bengaluru, India. The authors draw on an interdisciplinary methodology based in performance studies, archaeology, sociology, history, and cultural studies to question the ways that the diasporic communities perform the homescape through objects, practices, languages, and kin relationships, and how the memory of the ‘homeland’ left behind becomes part of the performance and experience of the homescape in the new location. Co-authored, the chapter continues and extends our research using transdisciplinary dialogues across performance studies and archaeology to consider the interplay of history in the present, and the importance of cultural heritage in the forming of place and identity.