I am not just passing by…
— Harriet Zhang
The critique against pathologisation and somatisation is no news (at least for those studying con-temporary medicalisation). Both explain human conditions through a reasoning of medical diag-nosis that remain at a very physiological level. Despite of being powerful analytic tools, they have promoted a logic that reduces the entirety of matters to merely visible, and sometimes superficial, expressions. They also assume the ubiquity among different individuals only to find out that they need to hide the dirty traces of category fallacies. I often use these two concepts to mock the contemporary academic atmosphere as it is an embodiment of a routinising logic.
Such a logic is dangerous. The fear of falling out the self-perpetuating orders of a prescriptive Di-aspora (in singular form) is understandable. But equally, the politics of defining a pathologically and somatically authentic form of diaspora also entails a risk of othering.
Nevertheless, the entrenched idea of diaspora is still challenged. While a different approach might be to specify the discourse critically - instead of ticking boxes of essential features of the so-called diaspora category or policing the range of its forms - Diasporas Now was established to escape the authoritative currency of a closed-end definition at play for people who have been dispersed from the previous (but not necessarily “original” (let’s de-colonise this word too)) loca-tions, cultures, genders and beyond.
The heteroglossia among Diasporas Now!s constellation of artists was quite exciting. Narratives of ruptures and loss, as well as de-aestheticising vessels of bodily memories, all empowered them to open up the conversation about contemporary diasporic qualities. Started off as a platform for performances, Diasporas Now did not seem to have limited its contact zone for performers only. Celebrating the roles of sounds, poetries, garments, makeups, moving images and so, they brought us a phantasmagoria of symbiosis among various practices.
While I was writing this response, my friend shared two articles on WeChat and they summed up my recent anxiety as I decided to go back to China. The first one (the image on the left) had a photograph of a re-cent event, called “Feminism and Feminist Perspective”, with a panel of seven male speakers. Another article (now deleted), which was then translated and posted on Western social media (the image on the right), was about a number of LGBTQ+ accounts on WeChat being banned in China.
The source of my anxiety might also be my overthinking but witnessing the control in my home-land is too strong a double bind. If this is the environment I will be dealing with in China, I do not feel confident to confront it. In fact, what if I start compromising?
I had never been worried about my rootedness and I had never imagined myself being related to any diasporic quality. I would not associate myself with any urgent representation issues. I also did not like to victimise myself because I was certain about my footing. But for the first time, I started seeing myself part of a larger contemporary diaspora - or, at least, part of this collective sentiment.
Flying home has become extremely difficult now. Not only do I have to quarantine for 21 days and be in a liminal phase, but I also have to make sure the antibody within me will not show positive on the n protein test result.
An antibody is a dirt.
Mary Douglas wrote, “[d]irt is essentially disorder… dirt offends against order.” While our world is protected and defended by the politics of cleanliness (both literally or symbolically), the order is also the danger. The loss of my footing started when virus struck across my comfort zones. As much as I have always said that home was my root, I am scared because I am the dirt. So when I met Rieko, Lulu and Paola on zoom and asked about their visions, I was admiring their effort to challenge the dominant consensus and to confront the hegemonic orderings of values. As they invite us to investigate the normalised attitude towards diasporas, they are also embracing the transitions they themselves went through as individual immigrants.
Perhaps a forced quarantine is not escapable. Perhaps controls will also remain. But so will the antibody and the dirt. I wish we are more than mere strangers or passengers when we move to places. I wish we transcend the localities that others created for us and mobilise our process of becoming. The complicity will empower us and carry us further.