Encountering the Imagined Other: Interpretive Circle and Identity Negociation among Western Expatriates in India
Archetypes of India persist through time thanks to a continual and repetitive chain of stereotypes, confining the subject in an interpretive circle. Through ethnographic research conducted among Western expatriates living in various borderzones in India, each one corresponding to different fantasies of elsewhere-ness, we shall see what becomes of the interpretive circle during the encounter. The article shows the influence of collective representations of India (and of the West) on social interactions, as well as their reappropriation during the encounter. Three examples will show how discourse as well as modes of social organisation among Western expatriates reproduces classic dichotomies between India and the West, even though expatriates assert their own liminality and their critical stance towards modernity.