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Emily Churilla

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The concepts of home have been, and continue to be, the foundation of much of the contention surrounding all sides of discourse regarding diaspora and immigration - through both viewing the home as threatened and defiled as well as redefining the imagined reality of home. It is the impasse of working around and against the frame of Western temporality and space from within the trope of home that this paper will explore; specifically how narratives of diasporic subjectivity disrupt and threaten normalized constructs of origin and time, history, and identity. Because to only consider the question of "home" leaves a considerable gap in the examination of narratives of immigration, exile, and diaspora - the gap (or lag) of time. Not only do different geographical spaces occupy different temporalities, but often groups of individuals within these bounded spaces do not align with, operate, and occupy time and space the way dominant cultures do within those same borders. This paper will examine temporality through diasporic narratives as both articulated by dominant culture fears of immigration and through immigrant experience. Concluding my arguments of the time gaps and lags of diaspora I will read Stephen Frears' 2002 film Dirty Pretty Things as a paradigmatic example of the ambiguities and potential perceived 'dangers' of the diasporic or immigrant body within the Western nation. The subversiveness in narrations of the diasporic subject springs from the paradox of colonial identity; the translation of master tropes and codes through the diasporic subject is an incomplete replication that does not allow the subject reconciliation within the dominant institution - instead creating a moment of crisis within the colonial culture.

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