An Analysis of Indian Tamil Identities in the Us
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Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2018 (DE)HOMOGENIZING DIASPORA: AN ANALYSIS OF INDIAN TAMIL IDENTITIES IN THE US Christabel Devadoss Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Devadoss, Christabel, "(DE)HOMOGENIZING DIASPORA: AN ANALYSIS OF INDIAN TAMIL IDENTITIES IN THE US" (2018). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7173. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7173 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. 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(DE)HOMOGENIZING DIASPORA: AN ANALYSIS OF INDIAN TAMIL IDENTITIES IN THE US Christabel Devadoss Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography Karen Culcasi, Chair Trevor Harris, PhD Maria Perez, PhD Cynthia Gorman, PhD Ishan Ashutosh, PhD (Indiana University Bloomington) Department of Geology and Geography Morgantown, West Virginia 2018 Keywords: [India, Diaspora, Indian Diaspora, Tamil Diaspora, Indian Tamil, Tamil, Tamil Nadu, Diaspora, Sound, Memory, Soundscapes, Discrimination, Identity, Identity Politics, Scale, Hybridity, Indian Diaspora Politics] Copyright 2018 Christabel Devadoss ABSTRACT (De)Homogenizing Diaspora: An Analysis of Indian Tamil Identities in the US Christabel Devadoss The Indian diaspora, like many other minority communities in the US, has been homogenized and misrecognized because of lack of cultural awareness. Indians have recently experienced a rise in hate crimes and violence in a post-9/11 United States. This lack of cultural awareness is a concern for many minorities for multiple reasons, including the intensified fear of being marked as different, being “othered” or misrecognized, and the threat of discrimination and violence. The Indian diaspora is often homogenized as a single entity even in academic studies. Internal politics within Indian communities as well as discrimination within broader US contexts contribute to a very complex, multi-faceted web of identity politics. This dissertation broadly focuses on identity politics of diaspora communities. It provides insights into discrimination and othering in the US by critiquing generalizations and homogenized understandings of the South Asian/Indian diaspora in media and academia. It accomplishes this through an in-depth study of how Tamil- Americans experience and perform their complex, scaled, and hybrid identities and how these identities intersect with sound – more specifically, music, accent, language, and environmental sounds. Sound is an often overlooked part of geographic inquiry, but especially important to how people experience identities and discrimination. The goal of this dissertation is to understand more deeply the nuanced ways that diasporic identity is shaped, represented, and lived with respect to sound, scale, and hybridity. This research contributes to diaspora theories by bridging sound and the everyday to broader theoretical concepts like Orientalism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory. This analysis of identity and discrimination brings attention to complex, heterogeneous, and lived experiences of the Indian diaspora, resulting in 15 findings, with a focus in five specific areas. The first set of findings relate to the emergence of hierarchical scalar identities in moments. The second set of findings relate to hybridity and the emergence of postcolonial identities in settler colonial states. The third set of findings link hybridity and scale, demonstrating a complex relationship between these concepts. In some moments, often connected to discrimination, people think about identities as hierarchical. In others, they show that these identities are hybrid, in-between, and challenge remnants of colonial binaries. The fourth set of findings focus on sound and identity politics. These findings suggest that sound is incredibly important to how identity is lived and represented. It also suggests that while discrimination can be based on the visual, people also monitor their own identities and the identities of others through sound. Finally, discrimination is multi-layered as Indian Tamils experience and reproduce discrimination through sound at multiple levels within and outside of Indian communities as well as toward other minorities. These forms of discrimination are often tied to geographic location, with many Indian Tamils experiencing more discrimination in rural, less diverse areas in the US. Through these findings, this dissertation contributes to literature on the relationship between identity, hybridity, and scale; identity and sound; and their importance to discrimination and Critical Race Theory. Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION 1 BROADER RELEVANCE 6 HOMOGENIZATION AND THE INDIAN TAMIL DIASPORA 8 CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCHOLARLY RESEARCH 12 DEHOMOGENIZING IDENTITY THROUGH SCALE AND HYBRIDITY 13 SOUNDS – MUSIC, ACCENT, LANGUAGE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS 15 FRAMING OF LITERATURE 17 POSTCOLONIAL AND CRITICAL RACE LITERATURE 17 NON-REPRESENTATIONAL THEORY AND SOUNDS 18 DIASPORA 18 GOAL OF DISSERTATION 19 STRUCTURE OF DISSERTATION 22 CHAPTER 2 – LITERATURE OVERVIEW 24 POSTCOLONIAL SCHOLARS, CRITICAL RACE AND MIGRATION LITERATURE, AND IDENTITY 24 SAID AND THE “OTHER” 26 HYBRIDITY, IN-BETWEEN, AND MIMICRY 28 CRITICAL MIGRATION LITERATURE AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY 34 NON-REPRESENTATIONAL THEORY AND SOUND 39 SOUND AND IDENTITY 44 DIASPORA – ORIGINS AND TRADITIONAL DEFINITIONS 51 SECOND-WAVE DIASPORA DEFINITIONS 52 SCALE AND DIASPORIC IDENTITY 58 UPCOMING ANALYSIS 61 CHAPTER 3: CASE STUDY AND METHODS 63 THE INDIAN DIASPORA – COMPLEX AND MULTI-FACETED 63 INDIAN DIASPORA IN THE US 65 INDIAN TAMIL DIASPORA IN THE US 67 FIGURE 1: STATE OF TAMIL NADU 68 RESEARCH SITES 69 FIGURE 2: STATES OF SOUTH INDIA 71 METHODS 73 ALTERED METHODS 77 DATA, CODING, AND ANALYSIS 79 POSITIONALITY 82 ANALYSIS AHEAD 87 iv CHAPTER 4 – HYBRIDITY AND SCALE 88 HYBRIDITY AND SCALE 89 FIGURE 3: SPATIALLY-ORIENTED IDENTITIES REFERENCED BY PARTICIPANTS, DEMONSTRATING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCALE AND HYBRIDITY. 92 HYBRIDITY AND SCALE DEBATES 92 SCALE AND HYBRIDITY EXISTING SIMULTANEOUSLY 95 VARYING HYBRID AND SCALAR IDENTITIES 100 COMPLEX IDENTITIES 103 TENSIONS BETWEEN IDENTITIES 109 CONTRADICTORY, OPPOSING, AND FLUID SCALAR AND HYBRID IDENTITIES 112 HYBRID AND SCALAR INDIAN VS TAMIL 113 HYBRID AND SCALAR INDIAN VS. TAMIL IN AMERICAN CONTEXT 127 IMPLICATIONS 140 CHAPTER 5: SOUND AND IDENTITY 142 OVERALL SOUND FOR TAMIL AMERICANS 143 SOUND AND TAMIL IDENTITY 146 TABLE 1: SOUNDS AND VARIOUS IDENTITIES 152 FIGURE 5: A VISUAL DEMONSTRATION OF HOW SOUNDS INTERSECT WITH IDENTITIES. 153 ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS 154 FOOD AND ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS 163 MUSIC AND IDENTITY 168 FIGURE 7: 2016 CLEVELAND THYAGARAJA PROGRAM GUIDE WITH MAP OF CLEVELAND, OH AT THE CENTER. SOURCE: 2016 CLEVELAND THYAGARAJA ARADHANA PROGRAM GUIDE. 179 LANGUAGE 182 LANGUAGE AT EVENTS 188 ACCENT 191 SUMMARY 197 CHAPTER 6: DISCRIMINATION AND “OTHERING” IN THE US FOR INDIAN TAMILS 199 FIGURE 8: WAYS THAT DISCRIMINATION AND OTHERING INTERSECT WITH SPATIAL/HYBRID IDENTITIES AND SOUND* 204 SOUTH ASIANS AND STEREOTYPES IN THE US 205 CONSTRUCTIONS OF “OTHER” 209 IMPORTANCE OF GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION 212 RECENT ISLAMOPHOBIA, XENOPHOBIA, AND WHITENESS 215 THE RISE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA AND IMPLICATION OF BROWNNESS 227 ORIENTALISM AND OTHERING 233 WEB OF DISCRIMINATION 242 CONTEXT AND US DISCRIMINATION 248 CHAPTER 7: DISCRIMINATION, “OTHERING,” AND INDIAN IDENTITY 252 v WHITENESS AND MARGINALIZATION OF TAMILS IN THE INDIAN DIASPORA 255 OTHERING WITHIN “TAMIL” IDENTITY 270 PROBLEMS OF WHITENESS IN THE INDIAN DIASPORA 281 SUMMARY 292 CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS 294 FINDINGS 296 EMERGENCE OF HIERARCHICAL SCALAR IDENTITIES 296 HYBRIDITY – POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITY 300 THE TENUOUS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCALE AND HYBRIDITY AND IDENTITY 303 SOUND AND IDENTITY POLITICS 304 MULTI-LEVEL DISCRIMINATION, OTHERING, AND IDENTITY 307 FUTURE WORK 312 DELIMITATIONS AND LIMITATIONS 313 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 315 REFERENCES 317 APPENDIX A 343 APPENDIX B 345 APPENDIX C 346 vi Dedication: I dedicate this to all of my grandparents who are the reason I am here today – Dolores Boos, Hannah Christabel Devadoss, Donald Boos, and Sundaram Devadoss vii Acknowledgements: First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Karen Culcasi for 4 years of dedicated support and detailed feedback. I would also like to thank my committee, Dr. Ishan Ashutosh, Dr. Maria Perez, Dr. Trevor Harris, and Dr. Cynthia Gorman for their feedback and guidance throughout the dissertation process as well. Peer support is incredibly important, so I would like to thank my wonderful support group at WVU – Jothiganesh Shanmugasundaram, Barb MacLennan, Frank LaFone, Hari Hara Sudhan Lakshman, Pragya Srivastava, Joshua Lohnes, David Knieter,