The politics of nostalgia: Social memory and national identity among diaspora Tibetans in New York City

This dissertation focuses on the community of diaspora Tibetans living in and around New York City, and their quest to imagine their homeland as a kind of Buddhist utopia separated from the political and economic hardships that mire Tibet today. Such a quest can be seen in the emergence of narratives of nostalgia generated by Tibetans living in exile. The production of an idealized site within the diasporic imaginary is a crucial element in any displaced people's attempts to reproduce culture in the absence of important aspects of its physical basis. Integral to such strategies is the development of narratives that portray life in the homeland in idyllic or utopian terms so that it is possible to achieve and maintain the impetus necessary to re-inhabit it with full claims to independence. An important component of this collective attempt to generate such ideal images of the homeland is the arousal of a desire to remain faithful to a particular image of the past and ultimately to return to it. Dialectically, exile politics are also influenced by the emergence of narratives in the refugee community. Any discourse concerning life in Tibet, present or past, which is cultivated by Tibetans living in exile must negotiate with the repressive measures taken by the Chinese against the Tibetan people. Further, diaspora removes people from spaces they regard not merely as "home," but as "sacred ground." Tibetans consider the Tibetan plateau to be the ground on which their entire cultural and religious heritage was established. But exile creates situations in which the very bases of social memory and collective identity are necessarily reshaped. With each successive generation born into exile, the remnants of Tibetan culture are being gradually diffused; with the impossibility of imminent return, the narratives which link the people to their past are becoming increasingly intertwined with the complex nuances of their present. Although many Tibetans living in exile believe that diasporic conditions are having largely negative effects on Tibetan culture, the creativity and invention that distinguish Tibetan efforts to reconstitute their culture in exile suggest to me a remarkable resilience.