Recognition
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When I reflect on the course thus far, it is hard to choose one text I will take forward because I know there will be more than one. Ahmed’s, The Promise of Happiness, introduces me to ideas for pulling everything together. It was particularly useful after the readings from a disability studies perspective, discussing the often forgotten invisibility of disability. After Ahmed, reading Povinelli reinforces what is not available to all. Perhaps one day believing the societal construction of the mystery and disinformation of happiness may appear in the DSM as a symptom of delusional practices. For this exercise I’ll focus on a section of Sara Ahmed’s fourth chapter in The Promise of Happiness, “Melancholic Migrants”:
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To be alienated from happiness is to recognize not only that you are the one who is out of place but also that you cannot make yourself be in place, that you cannot make yourself belong “anywhere.” Such recognition involves an alienation from the abstract potentiality of the individual, premised on the belief that you can do or be whatever you want to do or be. Without that self-belief, happiness seems to recede from “where” one is, as if within the loss of the “whatever” is also the loss of a “wherever.” We are reminded that the freedom to be happy, even as fantasy, might evoke “somewhere,” as a where that only some can be. (2309-2313).
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I hesitate to start this reflection because I feel like a hypocrite even as I write it. I don’t know what it really feels like to be a “foreigner”. Even though I lived away from my birth country for almost 10 years, I hail from the dominant hegemonic power in the world. Even when I live in a place that doesn’t speak my native tongue or have any of my native traditions, I recognize that in some way, by the shear right of birth, I represent something that hurts, controls, and manipulates others. I’m not expected to adjust to any new culture no matter how long I live somewhere. I’m American for God’s sake. The world revolves around me even if I resist it.
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Though I can’t fully understand the experience, I connect to the words of Ahmed. I’ve sat at the bar in a small town in Ireland, drinking Smithwicks and knowing that I was “the one who is out of place” and that I could not construct myself in any way to belong there. I was an illegal alien for almost 3 years, taking jobs that kept me getting “black money”, often cleaning a lot of toilets and getting gypped in my pay. I didn’t have a choice in that context to fulfill the American promise of “do or be whatever you want to do or be”. I was living in the land which seemed to value mediocrity above all else. Don’t be too good at anything. Don’t work too hard. Don’t stand out. In all that time, it was still my choice. I could have gone back to the States. I was afraid of getting caught or deported, but in reality I could always go home.
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This brings me to the plight of the migrant or more specifically, the international student, in whose world I will most likely spend most of my research career. My life encounters have given me a small opening to approach this place. I don’t and can’t fully understand the actualities of migrating to or studying in the most powerful country in the world. I can observe the international faces, full of happiness in the first few weeks of their first semester. Then as the culture shock works its way through its phases, I see the smiles fade, and the frustrations surface. The land of possibilities is replaced with the land of assholes who like to call you a “terrorist” under their breath as they pass you in Walmart. They yell at you when you try to give money to a cute little kid on the bus, not caring to even consider it might have cultural significance to you. Preferring instead to assume you are some kind of pedaphile.
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I’ve seen students learn to play the game. They put on the smiles and keep being “happy” because who wouldn’t be – they are studying in the greatest country in the world. Playing happy gets you some approval from teachers and administrators or at the very least, more participation points in class. There is even some form of acceptance in the classroom, but never fully. There is always that “somewhere,” as Ahmed says, “as a where that only some can be” (2312-2313).
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I’ve observed and I’ve listened to stories. I’ve heard tales of not understanding the school system. I’ve heard accounts of playing it safe in every way because the stakes are so high. International students don’t have the option to fail. Expectations must be reached. Many professors are excited to have students compare their home culture with the new culture they are encountering. How can they do that? How it is possible to compare your lifelong experience to something you’ve known for a few weeks or months? That same something that you will never be given real access to experience? We don’t have those expectations for others entering our classroom.
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There is something in Ahmed’s words that open up a new space for me in my friendships and research with international students. In the past, I’ve been more interested in helping international students understand American culture in the hopes they would feel some kind of acceptance or happiness with their experience. As Ahmed underlines, just as I couldn’t ever be happy in Ireland, these students may never really be happy in the States because they do not have access to that happiness.
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I don’t completely understand quite yet how this “new space” is defined. Perhaps it is a space of recognition. Recognition of the realities of exclusion. Recognition in that as much as I will continue to strive for equity in opportunity, the existence of it will not become an actuality. Recognition of the fact that if bringing something into reality isn’t the point, it may be “enough” to bring it into the light. Ahmed’s quote conveys recognition to me – of the alienation from happiness.
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As I move soon into my dissertation, I hope to illuminate conditions that exist for international students, especially in their experiences as parents with children in the American school system. I want to recognize more clearly what is being “refused” these parents in the content of communication that occurs between American public schools and families. Ahmed’s words and many others in this course have given me a greater understanding and confidence to explore these ideas, not as someone who has lived them in their fullness, but a someone who is willing to be an ally.
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Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Kindle Edition.
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Povinelli, Elizabeth. “The Child in the Broom Closet.” Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. 1-45. Print.
Being an international student, what struck me in the essay Janelle is the focus on the international student. The issue of the “happiness” of the international student” is of much concern to all international students here. I do not quite agree that by time the smile of the international students “fade, and the frustrations surface.” However, I do agree that those students, by time, “learn to play the game. They put on the smiles and keep being “happy” because who wouldn’t be – they are studying in the greatest country in the world.”