Background

This blog captures my notes and reflections as I read this book. I found much resonance in Bhabha’s text and I hope this blog will be a treasure trove of inspiration for me to make work through exploring my Third Space.

This is an ongoing blog that I plan to update as I go along as I expect to take time digesting the text and is likely to involve much re-reading over time.

Notes and reflections:

Introduction refers to novels by VS Naipaul drawing out essence to position Bhabha’s notion of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ which asserts measuring global progress from the minority perspective.

The right to difference in equality.

A dual economy is not a developed economy.

‘Symbolic citizenship’ (Avishai Margalit) – surveillance culture of security… how do we tell the good migrant from the bad migrant? Which cultures are safe and unsafe?

Minority affiliations or solidarities arise in response to the failures and limits of democratic representation, creating new modes of agency, new strategies of recognition.

Poem by Adrienne Rich – An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) has powerful images. To do: research for images

Adrienne Rich struggles to find ways to establish narrative of what lies in-between the distinct moments that allows the characters to become affiliated in the spirit of ‘right to difference in equality’.

Rich places herself at the intersections of these narratives as a cultural re-visioning of a particular history ‘of one’s own’.

No name is yours until you speak it. Your personhood cannot be denied.

The borderline engagement of cultural differences may as often be consensual as conflictual. They have confound our definitions of tradition and modernity. Realign the customers boundaries between the private and the public.

Using architecture as a metaphor with stairwell connecting rooms – this interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains differences without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.

Useful links on Homi Bhabha’s work

Short lecture on Bhabha’s work:

Someone reviewing the book:

1.5 hours long lecture by Bhabha:

In-betweenness by Dr. Masood Raja

Chad A Haag review series on whole book:

Update 14th Dec 2023

At the Unit 1 tutorial, I was introduced to a note taking tool called Obsidian. It is based on the Zettelkasten method of note taking. I have since started using Obsidian and I have found it to be very useful and powerful. It will be very helpful for me because I was starting to struggle with just capturing my notes and thoughts on a list here. I needed to structure my thoughts and the data in a better way. So from now on, I will capture my notes on The Location of Culture in Obsidian instead of listing them in this blog.

Example of the graph view of notes so far taken with Obsidian:

I have also watched all five of the Chad A Haag study notes videos on YouTube – they are excellent and have helped me to quickly get a sense of the ideas by Homi K Bhabha. It is a book that requires time to study and digest. I will continue to read the book and will really take my time to understand it because it forms the foundation of my research in my art practice.