Reading family heirlooms, spelling public memory : cultural translation and the making of usable pasts in Greek America
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.12, No.1, 2004, pages 109-125
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109-125
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Abstract:
This article develops the notion of ethnicity-as-translation as a strategy to make immigrant and transnational pasts relevant in the present. My point of departure is a museum exhibit - displayed in the space of a Greek-American festival - entitled “Women's Fabric Arts in Greek America, 1 894-1 994. I analyze the production of meanings associated with this exhibit in terms of the social processes converging to its making: American multiculturalismi, ethnic preservation, ethnography, and the "cultural activism" of intellectuals. I argue that the idea of ethnicity as cultural translation offers itself to various constituencies - museum curators, scholars, artists, and cultural producers in general - interested in the preservation of Greek heritage. Translating ethnicity results in the proliferation of competing interpretations of Greek pasts in diaspora and elsewhere.
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Keywords:
ελληνική κληρονομιά
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