Critical Review Set 1, Post #3 (Maira, due 9/27)

Maira, Sunaina.  1999.  “Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture (New York Mix).”  In Cultural Anthropology (14.1), Feb. 1999.

Maira’s article deconstructs Desi youth musical culture with respects to its hybridity, its melding of styles and aesthetics associated with hip hop rooted in black American communities and with a variety of regionally distinct South Asian genres, particularly Punjabi bhangra.  Throughout the article, Maira questions this hybridity and interrogates its power as a subversive tool; she examines the “logic” of this melding by claiming that through the Desi dance party network, second-generation youth can “mediate between the expectations of immigrant parents and those of mainstream American peer culture by trying to integrate signs of belonging to both worlds” (37), in short that the multiple dimensions of this scene (where parties are attended by a largely Desi crowd that includes men and women that often share commonly held cultural values or regional and linguistic lineage) satisfies both a familial rootedness in South Asian community, as well as a subcultural identity that is distinctly American.  The result is the formation of a subcultural capital, a “hipness” as Maira observes, that is neither distinctly American nor distinctly South Asian, but rather distinctly South Asian American.  Maira also observes the splinters within this distinct Desi youth culture, noting the tensions between regionalist attitudes expressed in club culture (Gujaratis might scoff at the prevalence of Punjabi music), as well as the power dynamic that arises from typified Desi ideals of beauty based on “fair skin” perpetuated by Bollywood and an entrenched caste system, and a counter-femme culture of machismo under which many Desi men operate.      

In reference to the “culturally hybrid style” associated with South Asian American youth cultures, Maira cites the “juxtaposition of hip-hop fashion with Indian-style nose rings and bindis” (32) and later asserts that the melding of Indian and African American musical and aesethetic traditions “symbolically juxtaposes Indian and urban American popular cultures” (37).  If we trust Maira’s assertions that many second-generation Indian American youth have commodified “hip hop culture” to construct distinct, “hybrid” identities, does this relationship with established American art forms really represent one of “juxtaposition?”  When is it appropriate or valid to deem two cultures or communities “disparate” or oppositional so as to validate this “juxtaposition?”  As styles and traditions are appropriated and absorbed by certain groups, how does this further deconstruct the notion that traditions that are fused together are simultaneously juxtaposed?