Beyond cultural boundaries: imagining the nation in malooned

Abstract

In the contemporary global society, identity claims are always invested with multiple if not infinite subject domains based on identity categories such as “race, gender, generation, institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual orientation” (Bhabha 1994: 1), among others. In concurrence with Bhabha, it is imperative to look beyond the so-called “narratives of originary and initial subjectivities” to the particular “moments or processes” that emerge out of the “articulation of cultural differences” (1994:1). It is precisely within these so-called “in-between spaces” that it is possible to elaborate “strategies of selfhood” (Bhabha 1994:1). Eventually, these strategies aid in the creation of “new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation” (Bhabha 1994:1), thereby contributing to new ideas of being and belonging to the collective society. It is precisely within this specific framework, that the present study interrogates how Bob Nyanja‟s film Malooned (2007) contests and negotiates cultural identities through its audio-visual discursive strategies, which represent the nation as an integrated value-sharing community that embraces difference and/or diversity