Hello all! Harjant this is our Postcolonial Feminisms class. However, we don't really go by the title. We are more the "how do you queer postcolonial feminisms" class. Each student, there are three, has created their own trajectory in the course. I too have carved out a path of my own for the class. Perhaps each of you can tell Harjant, briefly, what you have been working with and on.
FYI, Harjant is interested in the concept of liminality and would like to know your thoughts. But please also ask him about his film. Liminality very much applies to the film in many ways.
Hi, Harjant. I'm Jessica, a senior film/sculpture major-- and my trajectory for this class over the semester began with American Drag Queens (Camp Out, Paris is Burning), transgender histories (Transgender Warriors), which led to Hijra (With Respect to Sex), to issues of Real (beaudrillard and Zizek) and finally to Van Gennep's Rites of Passage.
Congratulations on the film, I found it very well done-- and important in that you're, in effect, setting a precedent by making room for art and experiment in the realms of traditional, institutionalized scholarship.
Believe it or not, despite my identification as a straight, american, judeo-normative white girl (though, admittedly with multiple levels of questionings and understandings)-- I pretty severly identified with the film, almost to the point of tears. I explained my identification in class as a backwards one. My partner is a Desi PhD student, I'm learning Bengali, cooking shitloads of kitchurie, spent last summer in India with plans to return, and have a father dancing bangra at the office christmas party (He was one of few white people--I don't believe there to have been any Christians present, but possibly a Rastafarian). I belong neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. And then there's the courtesan obsessed, musical theatre fruit-fly in me. Somewhere there's also a little Anna Nicole mixed with an Art department director for a swanky Jewish summer camp that for some strange reason keeps asking me back. So that's me, sorry for the lengthy intro.
Would it be possible for you to talk a little bit about your process (and background) as a filmmaker? how do you see this film as a final product in relation to your original vision? and also in relation to your own, specific academic interests (would you mind talking about those as well)?
If you don't mind me being critical here, I've got a bit of a critique regarding your choices with your use of the white boy. Why was that red headed, white boy silent? Was it for purely symbollic effect? Is he physically incapably of talking? Did he just have nothing interesting to add? I found his silence (and placement within the frame at various points) very troubling. In effect, in the same way I had backwards identified with you, this white boy (swarthed in ethereal, flowy fabrics) was not only being backwards orientalized, but colonized.
I apologize for my probable myopia and insensitivity to various levels of specific identity issues with which I will never be able to identify, but I have to say it: WHITE PEOPLE HAVE IDENTITY CRISES TOO!!! And as a white person with many, and considering your choice to include the white boy in the film at all, I'd like to know more about him, hear something of what he has to say. Being the white member of a cross-cultural, interacial relationship doesn't make it any easier or better. He's liminal too, and in my simple opinion, silencing him simplifies the situation far too much. Could you talk a little bit about your decision here, and maybe some backstory on the silent, red-headed, white boy?
Thanks for blogging with us, Harjant! I look forward to your response!
Jessica: Nice summary of your work and great questions for Harjant. I know he is busy with his own end of the semester, so we'll all give him a moment. Keep checking in if you can though. Best.
I am terribly sorry that Harjant is not here. He said he would be, but he also has end of semester. If this was a ruse, I did not mean it for you all. And Jessica, great post. Best to Alll
Hey there Lorraine and Jessica.. Im so terribly sorry that I was not able to get to these questions in time.. its been a very busy end of semester for me and its only now that I'm get back in to my element..
To make it up to you.. Jessica.. how about we have a conversation over phone and I would love to answer any questions that you might have.. your interests sounds fascinating and I would love to hear more about your work.
please feel free to give me a call at 202-257-3999. if you are up for a chat.
Hey there Lorraine and Jessica.. Im so terribly sorry that I was not able to get to these questions in time.. its been a very busy end of semester for me and its only now that I'm get back in to my element..
To make it up to you.. Jessica.. how about we have a conversation over phone and I would love to answer any questions that you might have.. your interests sounds fascinating and I would love to hear more about your work.
please feel free to give me a call at 202-257-3999. if you are up for a chat.
In regards to the issue of framing Theron (the white boy) in the film.. i think I was trying to do what Hanif Khureshi did in My Beautiful Launderette, which also depicts an interracial queer relationship... and within the entire film, Khureshi never assumes that queer desire can transcend racialization.. infact is very much part of remembering and recalling.. see Gayatri Gopinath's into chapter of Impossible Desires for a more detailed discussion.. but essentially the point that I was trying to make is that queer diasporic subject exists against the backdrop of whiteness... yet at the same time, within diasporic spaces the white outsider is often silenced and relegated to the sidelines.
I'm actually working on journal article in which I explore this further.. if you would like to read it.. please feel free to email me at harjantsg@aol.com
8 comments:
Hello all! Harjant this is our Postcolonial Feminisms class. However, we don't really go by the title. We are more the "how do you queer postcolonial feminisms" class. Each student, there are three, has created their own trajectory in the course. I too have carved out a path of my own for the class. Perhaps each of you can tell Harjant, briefly, what you have been working with and on.
FYI, Harjant is interested in the concept of liminality and would like to know your thoughts. But please also ask him about his film. Liminality very much applies to the film in many ways.
Harjant: One of the questions in class was how did you work distribution for your film?
Hi, Harjant. I'm Jessica, a senior film/sculpture major-- and my trajectory for this class over the semester began with American Drag Queens (Camp Out, Paris is Burning), transgender histories (Transgender Warriors), which led to Hijra (With Respect to Sex), to issues of Real (beaudrillard and Zizek) and finally to Van Gennep's Rites of Passage.
Congratulations on the film, I found it very well done-- and important in that you're, in effect, setting a precedent by making room for art and experiment in the realms of traditional, institutionalized scholarship.
Believe it or not, despite my identification as a straight, american, judeo-normative white girl (though, admittedly with multiple levels of questionings and understandings)-- I pretty severly identified with the film, almost to the point of tears. I explained my identification in class as a backwards one. My partner is a Desi PhD student, I'm learning Bengali, cooking shitloads of kitchurie, spent last summer in India with plans to return, and have a father dancing bangra at the office christmas party (He was one of few white people--I don't believe there to have been any Christians present, but possibly a Rastafarian). I belong neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. And then there's the courtesan obsessed, musical theatre fruit-fly in me. Somewhere there's also a little Anna Nicole mixed with an Art department director for a swanky Jewish summer camp that for some strange reason keeps asking me back. So that's me, sorry for the lengthy intro.
Would it be possible for you to talk a little bit about your process (and background) as a filmmaker? how do you see this film as a final product in relation to your original vision? and also in relation to your own, specific academic interests (would you mind talking about those as well)?
If you don't mind me being critical here, I've got a bit of a critique regarding your choices with your use of the white boy. Why was that red headed, white boy silent? Was it for purely symbollic effect? Is he physically incapably of talking? Did he just have nothing interesting to add? I found his silence (and placement within the frame at various points) very troubling. In effect, in the same way I had backwards identified with you, this white boy (swarthed in ethereal, flowy fabrics) was not only being backwards orientalized, but colonized.
I apologize for my probable myopia and insensitivity to various levels of specific identity issues with which I will never be able to identify, but I have to say it: WHITE PEOPLE HAVE IDENTITY CRISES TOO!!! And as a white person with many, and considering your choice to include the white boy in the film at all, I'd like to know more about him, hear something of what he has to say. Being the white member of a cross-cultural, interacial relationship doesn't make it any easier or better. He's liminal too, and in my simple opinion, silencing him simplifies the situation far too much. Could you talk a little bit about your decision here, and maybe some backstory on the silent, red-headed, white boy?
Thanks for blogging with us, Harjant! I look forward to your response!
Jessica: Nice summary of your work and great questions for Harjant. I know he is busy with his own end of the semester, so we'll all give him a moment. Keep checking in if you can though. Best.
I am terribly sorry that Harjant is not here. He said he would be, but he also has end of semester. If this was a ruse, I did not mean it for you all. And Jessica, great post. Best to Alll
Hey there Lorraine and Jessica.. Im so terribly sorry that I was not able to get to these questions in time.. its been a very busy end of semester for me and its only now that I'm get back in to my element..
To make it up to you.. Jessica.. how about we have a conversation over phone and I would love to answer any questions that you might have.. your interests sounds fascinating and I would love to hear more about your work.
please feel free to give me a call at 202-257-3999. if you are up for a chat.
Thanks and sorry again for the delay.
Harjant
Hey there Lorraine and Jessica.. Im so terribly sorry that I was not able to get to these questions in time.. its been a very busy end of semester for me and its only now that I'm get back in to my element..
To make it up to you.. Jessica.. how about we have a conversation over phone and I would love to answer any questions that you might have.. your interests sounds fascinating and I would love to hear more about your work.
please feel free to give me a call at 202-257-3999. if you are up for a chat.
Thanks and sorry again for the delay.
Harjant
In regards to the issue of framing Theron (the white boy) in the film.. i think I was trying to do what Hanif Khureshi did in My Beautiful Launderette, which also depicts an interracial queer relationship... and within the entire film, Khureshi never assumes that queer desire can transcend racialization.. infact is very much part of remembering and recalling.. see Gayatri Gopinath's into chapter of Impossible Desires for a more detailed discussion.. but essentially the point that I was trying to make is that queer diasporic subject exists against the backdrop of whiteness... yet at the same time, within diasporic spaces the white outsider is often silenced and relegated to the sidelines.
I'm actually working on journal article in which I explore this further.. if you would like to read it.. please feel free to email me at harjantsg@aol.com
I would be happy to send you a draft
hg
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