Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the cultural poetics of Punjabi migration in relation to rural objects and objectifications among urban and transnational Punjabis. Via a select curation, I argue that the objects of tradition embody both the imagining of continuous belonging and the impossibility of return.

Paper long abstract:

People in motion have long carried objects, and for perhaps almost as long, objects have been crafted to express the experiences and meanings of movements of people. This paper explores the relations between movement, materiality, memory, and modernity which emerge in the Punjabi diaspora, and particularly in those material, spatial, visual, and textual practices which seek to recreate notions of home and identity in contexts of migration. Such practices of tradition are attached to objects of everyday life and ritual, as well as in a cultural poetics which focuses on village pasts. As such, a diverse material culture circulates in the Punjabi diaspora, alongside materially-based images, texts, mediations, and practices which objectify and imagine Punjabi culture in its places of origin and departure (e.g. housewares such as kitchen utensils, bodily objects such as dress and cosmetics, household art, heirloom goods, and the representational imageries of bhangra videos, Punjabi cinema, and tourism venues). These 'objects of tradition' may serve practical purposes, such as producing traditional foods, but they also engage nostalgic and powerful imaginaries which help to maintain continuous notions of belonging, identity, and ethnicity, even as they may memorialize and reify the same. These objectifying processes can endow new powers of affect and representation on the objects themselves, even as in other ways Punjabi material culture engages modernity. Via objects and objectifications, I consider the power of village objects in urban and transnational contexts with regard to notions of belonging and the imagining, infinite regress, and impossibility of return.