Refugee utopias: (Re)theorizing refugeeism through cultural production of the Hmong diaspora
Author(s):
Ogden, Mitchell Paul
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ph.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : University of Minnesota, 2008.
Pages:
271
Language:
English
Abstract:
This dissertation theorizes the existence of “refugee utopias”—fraught liminal spaces of refugee resettlement wherein culture is produced and reproduced in moments of transition, suspension, and progression that put communities into diaspora. Engaging audio and visual magnetic media, orthographies and literacy practices, and literary movements and texts, this study offers one broad, diverse composite of Hmong diasporic cultural practices. Homeland theorized as tebchaws, postliteracy and its ideologies, and the trope(s) of literary movement comprise the central arguments that emerge from the texts and their relevant social, historical, political, and cultural contexts. This analysis offers active and engaged frameworks for the contemplation of the contemporary moment of cultural production throughout the Hmong diaspora. Throughout this study, the cultural figure of the refugee is (re)considered, and its stigmas of perpetual victimhood and the necessity of patronage are stripped away. In their place, the cultural agency of the refugee is restored and refugeeism is retheorized—expanded and enlarged—facilitating responsible and apt engagement of the cultural contributions and cultural creations of those global actors who are often relegated as props in the dramas of war, calamity, and human migration.