Making (Critical) Meaning of Meaning-making: Complicating the Racialization of Asian Indian American Youth

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the racializing processes throughlining the meaning-making of a Guru Vandana—an annual teacher appreciation event organized by many Asian Indian communities across the U.S.—that took place in a Midwestern city in 2019. Guided by a framework of transmodalities (a novel lens for the analysis of multimodal semiosis) and critical bifocality (a methodological approach to connect discursive and lived practices with broader structural arrangements), the author drew on interview and observational data of a set of Indian American parents and children and white teachers who attended the event to trace and analyze meanings intended, made, and missed of featured performances (e.g., dance, chants, and yoga demonstrations by the children). Indexing the deep embedment of Indian American positioning within multiple translocal and transnational hierarchies, findings reveal Guru Vandana’s tacit operation as a space wherein varied framings and understandings of Indianness circulate to both contest and (re)produce racialization, stereotypes, and caste subjectivity.