I spent the last weekend in Los Angeles for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention. Apart from the fact that I spent time with some of my old friends and scored some free books, I also presented a paper on Ramabai Espinet's novel The Swinging Bridge. During the Q&A session, I got into a little bit of trouble for using the words authentic Indianness. I had written it with the customary quotes and everything, but this is one of the things that people do like to pick on. I mean, honestly. My paper was talking about lots of things--plantation capitalism, gender, impossibility of writing certain histories blah blah blah. I mean, things that I would love the others to pick on. But no, most folks have to pick on that one minor ethnicity question. What to do! But one thing I realized, and this I think is going to be important for my work:
There is no authentic notion of Indianess (or blackness or brownness or anything really), but there is a dominant notion of Indianness. I mean, why "is" and "a, there are multiple dominant notions of Indianness.
So, note to myself: the next time I go back to that paper, I need to make it clear.
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