A Visual and Textual Analysis of Transnational Identity Formation and Representation
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CHAPMAN, DANIEL E., Ph.D. A Visual and Textual Analysis of Transnational Identity Formation and Representation. (2007) Directed by Dr. Leila E. Villaverde. 203 pp. This dissertation is an exploration of identity formation when crossing national boundaries and confronting disparate cultures and histories. Working with the assumption that identifying (or not) with local discourses informs behaviors and values, this study examines what questions emerge when one is immersed in discourses that were created beyond one’s locality. Through weekly interviews with two exchange students who came to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from Mexico, this inquiry explores how they situate themselves within and against their local discourses before, during and after the transnational experience. The author uses bricolage and brings together different ways of knowing: visual, textual, historical, personal, and analytical in order to explore this encounter with difference. Crossing national boundaries is an experience in which fixed notions are called into question through exposure to disharmonious realities. The purpose of using bricolage is to expose the readers to disharmony in hopes that their own questions emerge about the representation of culture and nature. Rather than leading the reader down a path in which an argument is built vertically, bricolage immerses the reader into a conversation and encourages the reader to make his or her own meaning in their engagement with the texts. By exploring the students’ experiences through both a visual documentary and a textual discourse analysis, a comparison between the different forms of representation arises. Different questions and meanings emerge depending on which method the researcher is using. Different paradigms exist at the same time. The pedagogical implications challenge typical definitions of education. Rather than thinking about education as coming from an authority figure that has categorized phenomena for an audience to consume, this dissertation explores the educative experience of pulling apart fixed categories and meditating on the resulting dissonance. The former isolated notion of education complements the written media and the classroom environment. The latter notion considers visual media an important place to raise questions. It deems experience, i.e., traveling, educative and difficult questions central. And it regards considerations about the opportunities and limitations of visual texts, as well as, the opportunities and limitations of written texts as a priority. A VISUAL AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY FORMATION AND REPRESENTATION by Daniel E. Chapman A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2007 Approved by Leila Villaverde Committee Chair To the two breaths who never quite exhaled. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair Leila Villaverde Committee Members Matt Barr Glenn M. Hudak H. Svi Shapiro June 14, 2007 Date of Acceptance by Committee June 14, 2007 Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the many people who supported me during the creation of this dissertation. I would especially like to thank my chair, Dr. Leila Villaverde, whose insight always pushed my work to a new level of scholarship and professionalism. I would also like to thank my exceptional doctoral committee Matt Barr, Glenn Hudak, and Svi Shapiro for their continual support and encouragement. I owe a special note of gratitude to the students I followed and their families for opening up their lives to me. Finally, I would like to thank my family. Lisa for dealing with my absence when there was already so much. My mom for reading every word of my dissertation and Toby who asked, “So, are you a changed person?” when I returned from Semester at Sea. I guess here is your answer. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................vii PROLOGUE: PROVOCATIONS/REFLECTIONS.........................................................1 CHAPTER I. CROSSING BOUNDARIES/CREATING MEANING...................................17 Imagined Identities.................................................................................20 Situating My I/Eye ................................................................................ 24 Discourses of Travel...............................................................................28 Why Documentary Film? .......................................................................29 Methodology..........................................................................................36 II. DOCUMENTARY DISCOURSES IN THE 20TH CENTURY AND BEYOND ........................................................................................44 Ways of Knowing Through Images and Media.......................................48 The Invention of the Movie Camera .......................................................55 Working Against a Definition of Documentary.......................................63 Totality and Infinity of the 20th Century Documentary...........................67 In the Beginning: “Nanook of the North”....................................70 From Nanook to Self-Reflexivity................................................73 Standing at an Impasse ...........................................................................80 Reaching for the Infinite: “Re-Assemblage” ...............................83 Documentaries Today.................................................................86 Future Glance: McLuhan vs. McChesney....................................89 exChange: The Documentary .................................................................95 III. JOURNEYING THROUGH THE CREATION .............................................96 The Urge to Create ............................................................................... 101 Flash of Insight .................................................................................... 102 Mastery of Techniques ......................................................................... 107 Monterrey................................................................................. 108 Greensboro ............................................................................... 115 The Traveler ............................................................................. 123 The Integrative Process ........................................................................ 124 v Page IV. AN INVESTIGATION OF TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY FORMATION THROUGH DISCOURSE ANALYSIS........................... 134 Discourse and Discourse Analysis........................................................ 137 Mexican Identity Formation ................................................................. 146 Interviewing and the Analyses.............................................................. 167 Mexican National Discourse ..................................................... 153 Indigenous Discourses .............................................................. 157 Discourses of Modernity........................................................... 162 Students’ Indigenous Discourses in Monterrey and Fall Semester......... 178 Students’ Discourses of Modernity in Monterrey Fall Semester............ 185 Indigenous and Modern Discourses after Returning to Monterrey......... 190 Conclusions.......................................................................................... 194 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 197 vi LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 Abel Truchet Poster (1896) Advertising Lumiére Exhibition..............................47 2 A Magic Lantern with a Strip of Pictures ...........................................................58 3 Disc Used on a Phenakistoscope, c. 1893...........................................................60 4 Reproduction of the Daedulum, Invented by George Horner in 1834..................61 vii 1 PROLOGUE: PROVOCATIONS/REFLECTIONS Unlike most dissertations this work is not built vertically. I do not begin with theoretical foundations and then construct a logical argument that concludes with practical applications. Rather, I structure my dissertation horizontally by placing visual texts, written texts, different types of research, and paradoxical ideas next to each other in order to see what foments from the reverberations. Experiential learning (i.e., traveling) is placed next to didactic learning. A visual analysis is placed next to a textual analysis. Aesthetic ways of knowing are considered with rational ways of knowing, and performative storytelling echoes against narrative storytelling. Like Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage, these texts “collide” against one another creating new meanings and interpretations. In concert with the horizontal structure of this dissertation, this prologue also serves as the epilogue. It provokes questions about the different educational opportunities provided in written and visual representations. These questions are vital to consider in order to introduce the study and they are also important to revisit after the interactions between the reader,