Glossary (& Resources) to accompany Antje M. Rauwerda’s FIGT Research Network Talk, June 4, 2021.

 

 Looking for TCK novels? Try Heidi Tunberg’s TCK Resources: http://tckresources.com/ 

 Or a booklist I compiled for this blog (Needs updates!): https://thirdcultureliterature.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-ever-growing-list-of-third-culture.html

 Terminology:

A cluster of terms about people who have relocated (used in Literary Analysis, but also widely in other disciplines):

 • Migrant (moves temporarily, e.g. “migrant worker”)

 • Immigrant (moves permanently to a new place, often adopts citizenship in new locale) 

• Emigrant (moves from a place) 

• Diaspora (originally from the Jewish diaspora—a scattered population whose origin is elsewhere. E.g. Indian diasporic population in England, Hong Kong diasporic population in Vancouver) 

• Global (Catch-all for anything people want to imply is international in some way! 

A footnote on problems: these terms often imply racial difference and power imbalances. 

 Two heavily theorized literary terms:

 • Postcolonial. After C19 European colonialism in Africa, India, Caribbean, Australia, Canada, NZ. Texts from formerly colonized countries, often engaged with the aftermath of the colonial encounter (racism, empire, recuperating indigenous and national identities). 

• Borderland. Spanning a border (e.g. First Nations peoples whose territories span the Canada/US border or, most commonly, migrant workers whose lives straddle the Mexico/US border) 

 Terms to compare with TCK: 

 1) Hybrid 

Hybrid is something mixed. It combines elements. A CCK might be hybrid . . . But a TCK (neither/nor, not an amalgamation) might not be. 

 2) Transnational 

 

Steven Vertovec “Transnationalism and Identity” 

“social worlds that span more than one place” 

“Circular flows of persons, goods, information and symbols”

 “tendency towards claiming membership in more than one place.”

 Nancy L. Greene The Limits of Transnationalism 

 “Transnationalism emphasizes the back-and forth-ness of interconnected ties” 

 “Circular flows” (Vertovec) and “back- and forth-ness” (Greene) (ie repeated crossings of the same borders) are not necessarily typical of the TCK. 

 “membership in more than one place”: TCKs feel neither/nor rather than the both/and.

 Transnationalism can happen at any age . . . And you don’t even need to be a person (“goods, information and symbols”) 

 3) Interstitial, Liminal, In-Between 

 Key Theorist: Homi K. Bhabha (Location of Culture, Nation and Narration) 

Interstice: usually, a small gap 

Liminal: a transitional area (e.g. a hallway), a threshold, a border 

In-Between: being in between things 

For Bhabha: diasporic populations are positioned on the line itself between one thing and another. 

 TCK is neither/ nor. 

 Liminal etc. are the actual dividing line. 

 Sounds like TCK, but isn’t: 

 Third World (a.k.a. “developing countries.” Used a lot in C20. Redolent with racism and neocolonial attitudes) 

 Third World Cosmopolitanism 

A term generated by Timothy Brennan in the 1980s: Essentially involves a “third world” postcolonial author who has relocated to a major “first world” city. E.g. Salman Rushdie. 

 Third Culture 

The Emerging Third Culture by John Brockman “In 1959 C.P. Snow published a book titled The Two Cultures. On the one hand, there were the literary intellectuals; on the other, the scientists.” In 1963, Snow expanded his idea when he “optimistically suggested that a new culture, a "third culture," would emerge and close the communications gap between the literary intellectuals and the scientists.”

June 4 Presentation for FIGT research network

 

“Third Culture Kid” and the Literary World 

Date: Friday, June 4, 2021

Time: 60 minutes. 9:00am EDT (New York) / 1:00pm GMT (Accra) / 3:00pm CEST (Vienna) / 9:00pm SGT, AWST (Singapore & Perth)

Location: Online (via Zoom)

Cost: FREE. Open to all. 

Join the FIGT Research Network for a discussion on the ‘Third Culture Kid (TCK)’ concept and research with Dr. Antje Rauwerda. 

I need “TCK” in my work.  Do you need it in yours?

“TCK” catches an experience of displacement that is usually invisible in Literary Studies.

As a college professor in a Literary Studies major, I spend a lot of time thinking about authors like Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan and Barbara Kingsolver: each of these is a TCK, but they are marketed as Canadian, British and American.  If their novels get taught in university courses, they are grouped with the novels of other Canadian, British and American writers. Focusing on the passport nationalities of these authors in marketing and teaching leaves out a great deal about the internationalism, dislocation and other TCK experiences they share.

The TCK experiences of the authors result in some surprising thematic similarities in their fictions, but without “TCK” as a term, there isn’t really any way for me to analyze how their novels are similar.

My discipline has highly theorized analytical terms like (im)migrant, diaspora, transnational, global, postcolonial, borderland, and liminal, but these do not capture the experience of spending one’s developmental years outside one’s passport nation.   

My presentation will first offer a brief and utilitarian description of some of the words used for internationalism in my field, with an emphasis on how they overlap with and differ from our construction of “Third Culture Kid.”  (I will provide a take-away glossary.)

Shame: The Next Frontier in Third Culture Studies

 I was recently at Transnational Literature's "Follow the Sun" Conference.  I was on a Third Culture panel (organized by Jessica Sanfilippo Schulz) with Jessica, and with Anastasia Goana (the dream team: we have paneled together before.  I hope we get to again).  "At" of course means "on zoom".  Look!  Here we are (Anastasia for the photo credit):

Zoom notwithstanding, the conference did what conferences are--at their best--supposed to do.  It stimulated thought/ exposed me to new ideas/ made me want to weep gratefully that other people out there in the world think that some of these issues are interesting too.

 I gave a paper on Third Culture and how it could function as a kind of nationality (nods to Benedict Anderson and Joanna Yoshi Grote, as well as Danau Tanu's work, which got me thinking along these lines in the first place).  I went on a bit of a tear about academia and methodological nationalism within our disciplines (which tend to be defined in terms of nation and so, even if our institutions like the hipness of "transnational" and boundary-crossing terms, these same organizations that fund our research and employment are stubbornly resistant to them). And . . . I wrapped up with some consideration of privilege, the problem of relegating host countries to mere backdrops, and shame.

Bambo Soyinka, who is sharp and articulate, and a pleasure to spend time thinking with, said of our panel as a whole that the issues of shame, denial and privilege kept surfacing.  Did they always have negative connotations, Bambo asked.

My answer was no.  In fact, I think turning to look those issues in the face is precisely where positive insights will emerge.  I want to write more about this.  I am, vaguely, beginning to cook a piece that deals with Jane Alison's The Sisters Antipodes and Sisonke Msimang's Always Another Country and the question of adult perspectives on a childhoods of comparative privilege.

In what I have so far on the question of shame, in a longer-playing article on TC Nationalism that I can't seem to get published, I quote Tanu's interview of an adult TCK dubbed "Afra"who grew up in Algeria.  That adult says of their childhood during times of political unrest, "I miss the riots."  Tanu notes that "some TCKs speak of developing countries as though their poor economic conditions or sociopolitical unrest were like adventure rides."  Oof, right?  At first, that TCK interviewee sounds like a bit of a jerk, except that what they really said had a specific intonation: "'I miss the riots,' said Afra, 'with knowing humor.'"  

Stop the train: that "knowing humor" changes everything.  'Afra" misses the riots (they miss their childhood home and its conditions), but Afra knows it is ridiculous, crazy, wrong, privileged, shameful, to say such a thing.

My contention is that the adult perspective on privileged childhood experience is something TCK scholars absolutely HAVE to deal with.  Here (from the article I haven't yet published), is why I think so:

What do you think?  Jessica Sanfilippo Schulz (who is quite the power-house in third culture literary work these days) wrote this to me in an email:

 By the way, regarding the comment about shame/guilt of last week, it is a recurrent theme in the four texts I have analysed (PhD thesis). As you illustrated, it is something that seems to occur retrospectively in adulthood. My first four chapters examine life writing written in adulthood and shame and guilt is always there, TCKs and refugees. BUT: in chapter 5 I explore life writing written by youth, and so far, I haven't come across shame and guilt much. Just at the beginning of one Vlog entry I am looking at and I am currently wondering how to tackle it / label it / explain it. I am writing the final chapter right now and will keep an eye on this theme. Another thing that I have noticed is that shame and guilt (so far the texts I have read) are only noticeable in texts by women. I haven't come across it in any of the other texts I have read by men. I therefore think that when it comes to looking at Jane Alison, you might want to compare the text with a memoir written by a man. 

My response, over email:

I have just had time to read this.   Goodness.  My jaw is on the floor.  There is my hunch . . . And then you go and back it up with a bevy of actual facts!  Hmn.  Well.  Seems like there is work to do.  I really like your idea of comparing a M and F memoirist. 

I like your blog idea too.  If I do one, would it be OK with you if I cut and pasted a few of your words from below?

So, Jessica: here is the blog post you requested :)

PS to everyone.  Do you think we will ever get past defining "third culture"?  I think literary terminology should provide us with useful tools, and TC has been useful to me . . . I confess, however, that I am tired of defining it, patrolling its borders, trying to make it cohere.  Jessica's conference paper branches out more into cross-culture, and Aminatta Forna spoke eloquently in her keynote at the conference about the transnational. . .

Comments welcome.