Dealing with Another Culture's Ghosts: Diaspora and Contact Zones in M. G. Vassanji's The Book of Secrets
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stuart Hall, in 'Cultural Identity and Diaspora,' reminds us that the old, imperializing and hegemonizing definition of diaspora refers 'to those scattered tribes whose identity can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all costs return, even if it means pushing other people into the sea' (244). Hall goes on to describe the diasporic experience as one that is marked by difference, transformation, and hybridity, and he challenges us to conceptualize diaspora in a manner that does not depend upon the centrality of the homeland. At the same time, we must not erase the distinctions between various forms of transnational mobility and displacement. While diasporic and immigrant experiences can be similar, they are not necessarily interchangeable; not all immigrants are members of diasporic communities, and not all members of diasporic communities are immigrants. What we must acknowledge when speaking about diasporas is the overarching presence of at least one outside force, such as imperial power, colonial authority, natural catastrophe or economic, social or political upheaval, to name just a few. M. G. Vassanji is one author whose fiction illustrates this difference through its multigenerational scope, which shows how the Shamsis' ethnic identity, while enduring in the diaspora, becomes transformed as it comes into contact with other ethnicities and cultures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".