Indian Ocean Nomadic Diasporas: Destabilizing Master Narratives of Belonging in M. G. Vassanji's Short Fiction

• Main Author: Ortega, Dolors
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: Deleuze and Guattari; diaspora; homelessness; in-between; Indian Ocean; Vassanji
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss41/11; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2053/viewcontent/KK_2041_2C_202023_2011_20Forum_20Kritika_20on_20Rhizomatic_20Communities_20Myths_20of_20Belonging_20in_20the_20Indian_20Ocean_20World_20__20Ortega.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

M. G. Vassanji’s evocative short fiction delves into the complex and intertwined tapestry of cultures that Indian Ocean communities represent. His characters lead border and nomadic lives and they occupy in-transit subject positions. Signs of constant navigation between different cultural contexts abound in stories about diasporic subjects who try to negotiate the in-between worlds they inhabit by crossing identity thresholds, such as the ones built around the secular- religious, Western-Eastern, and present-past divide. This article explores the potential that the Indian Ocean experience offers and seeks to unravel the extent to which Indian Ocean migration can effect transformation within more rigid narratives of national belonging. Vassanji’s short stories, in general, and When She Was Queen, in more detail, are analyzed, as this genre lends itself to explore a wide range of characters, whose complex affiliations represent a challenge to more rigid identity categorizations, adding a strong sense of collectivity. Vassanji’s short fiction explores the intrinsic diversity that defines the Western Indian Ocean world and the nomadic potential it has transplanted to Western contexts such as Canada and the USA and it offers a vantage point to observe the complex subjective processes of double displacement and the problematic negotiations of intergenerational and transcultural dealings, affecting those who are recurrently doomed to a state of homelessness.