Passport Photos

1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-21817-8
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 290 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Passport Photos, a self-conscious act of artistic and intellectual forgery, is a report on the immigrant condition. A multigenre book combining theory, poetry, cultural criticism, and photography, it explores the complexities of the immigration experience, intervening in the impersonal language of the state. Passport Photos joins books by writers like Edward Said and Trinh T. Minh-ha in the search for a new poetics and politics of diaspora.

Organized as a passport, Passport Photos is a unique work, taking as its object of analysis and engagement the lived experience of post-coloniality--especially in the United States and India. The book is a collage, moving back and forth between places, historical moments, voices, and levels of analysis. Seeking to link cultural, political, and aesthetic critiques, it weaves together issues as diverse as Indian fiction written in English, signs put up by the border patrol at the U.S.-Tijuana border, ethnic restaurants in New York City, the history of Indian indenture in Trinidad, Native Americans at the Superbowl, and much more.

The borders this book crosses again and again are those where critical theory meets popular journalism, and where political poetry encounters the work of documentary photography. The argument for such border crossings lies in the reality of people's lives. This thought-provoking book explores that reality, as it brings postcolonial theory to a personal level and investigates global influences on local lives of immigrants.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kumar, Amitava

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik: Minderheiten
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Ethnographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Physische Anthropologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Introduction

Language
Photograph
Name
Place of Birth
Date of Birth
Profession
Nationality
Sex
Identifying Marks

Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Notes
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Credits
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Amitava Kumar is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida, and has been a Fellow at Yale University. He is the editor of Class Issues: Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, and the Public Sphere (1997), and Poetics/Politics: Radical Aesthetics for the Classroom (1999). Kumar was the script-writer and narrator for the award-winning documentary film Pure Chutney (1998).