Future past I am a coolie-al…and I reside as an invisible island inside the ocean: Tidalectics, transoceanic crossings, coolitude and a Tamil identity

IF 1.7 2区 社会学 Q2 GEOGRAPHY Island Studies Journal Pub Date : 2021-05-01 DOI:10.24043/ISJ.159
Y. Nadarajah
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引用次数: 6

Abstract

The politics of Tamil working-class identity in Malaysia continue to be articulated in subaltern terms, employing term such as ‘coolie’, which is elsewhere an archaic usage from colonial days. Yet the power of the coolie narrative appears salient, and the coolie odyssey is far from over. Drawing upon the author’s longitudinal work with a Tamil squatter settlement in the heart of the city of Kuala Lumpur in the Malay Archipelago, this paper moves from third to first and then second narrative to capture the broad range of ruptures and transformations of Tamil sensibilities, a ‘coolitude’ that grew a pattern of life which emerged from a journey that began on the sea. In this article, the author envisions the ‘black ocean’ as an invisible island; shaped by colonial and imperial histories, racial capitalism and ocean crossings. These transoceanic crossings carried the weight of Tamil histories, rooted in the seas as an invisible island—as both the rupture of an identity and a translation from western namings and discourses. What remains is the ‘island’, rooted in the seas as a colonial wound of history, a tidalectic between transoceanic migration, personhood and language. This community is more than just its resilience, its assertions of power, its affair with identity and belonging, and its response to deep social inequalities in its homeland. It is also a space of a poetics of resoluteness to recover an identity that is not fractured, not alienated from place and transoceanic crossings. This paper attempts a retelling of a hidden hyphen that held the labourer and the personhood apart, but also together. It navigates through the concept of tidalectics first postulated by Barbadian poet and historian Kamau Braithwaite (2003) in conjunction with Valentine Daniel’s (2008) The Coolie and Khal Torabully’s (1992) Coolitude. The paper seeks to understand more deeply the performativity of the hyphen as an invisible island inside the ocean.
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未来的过去我是一个苦力……我生活在海洋中,就像一座看不见的岛屿:潮汐、越洋、苦力和泰米尔人的身份
马来西亚泰米尔工人阶级身份的政治仍然以次要术语表达,使用了“苦力”等术语,这在其他地方是殖民时代的古老用法。然而苦力叙事的力量似乎很突出,苦力的冒险之旅远未结束。根据作者对马来群岛吉隆坡市中心的一个泰米尔棚户区的纵向研究,本文从第三个叙事转移到第一个叙事,然后是第二个叙事,以捕捉泰米尔人情感的广泛断裂和转变,这种“冷静”形成了一种从海上开始的旅程中产生的生活模式。在这篇文章中,作者将“黑海”想象成一个看不见的岛屿;由殖民地和帝国历史、种族资本主义和渡海所塑造。这些越洋穿越承载着泰米尔历史的分量,植根于作为一个看不见的岛屿的海洋中——既是身份的断裂,也是对西方命名和话语的翻译。剩下的是“岛屿”,它植根于海洋,是历史的殖民创伤,是跨洋移民、人格和语言之间的矛盾。这个社区不仅仅是它的韧性、它对权力的断言、它对身份和归属的关注,以及它对祖国深刻的社会不平等的回应。这也是一个坚定的诗学空间,以恢复一种没有断裂、没有与地方和跨洋穿越疏离的身份。本文试图复述一个隐藏的连字符,这个连字符将劳动者和人格分开,但也结合在一起。它贯穿了巴巴多斯诗人和历史学家Kamau Braithwaite(2003)与Valentine Daniel(2008)的《酷烈》和Khal Torabully(1992)的《酷》首次提出的花言巧语概念。本文试图更深入地理解连字符作为海洋中一个看不见的岛屿的表现力。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.30
自引率
26.70%
发文量
29
审稿时长
6 weeks
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