Unravelling Difference: Towards a Sensory Multiculture

Publisher： Bloomsbury Journals (formerly Berg Journals)

ISSN： 1745-8935

Source： The Senses and Society, Vol.6, Iss.3, 2011-11, pp. : 284-305

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Abstract

This article interrogates the possibility of developing a “sensory multiculture,” in which difference could be encountered outside of domination or appropriation. It invokes alternative dialogic aesthetic practices for living with difference. The article centers on the film Unravelling (2008, dir. Kuldip Powar and produced as part of the Noise of the Past project). This film is shown to offer a fragile and speculative practice of “counter-memory” and “fabulation” for re-telling the story of post-colonial migrant involvement in the Second World War. At the heart of the film is the search for migrant experiences and memories of war that cannot be simply recuperated for buttressing nationhood. The film is replete with archival footage of war, multi-layered visual imagery, dialogic poetic exchange and an evocative textured soundscape. It is argued that the film creates an alter-realist aesthetic liberated from regimes of truth and racialized objectification of migrant life. The sensory multicultural aesthetic which the film activates effectively disrupts official histories of war and memory and offers an alternative mode of post-colonial belonging.