As Clifford points out in a different context, "Practices of displacement might emerge as constitutive of cultural meanings rather than as their simple transfer or extension" (1997, 3). Instead of concentrating solely on the essence, the roots of Tibetan identity, we should look at the processes that constitute the routes traveled, including the creation of a pan-Tibetan exilic identity. Adoption of such a view allows us to appreciate the ambiguities involved in the project of cultural preservation as well as the changes that come about in the life of a community of people. While understanding the need to espouse one's cause in terms of an essential identity, [89] the contingency of such claims is not papered over-and herein lies the strength of the alternative theorization. Therefore, instead of framing an artificial opposition between the roots of culture and the routes of culture, we may look at them as complementary, for this false dichotomy is sustained only by the conventional view of culture as rooted in a particular place. If we look, on the other hand, at the roots as contingent foundations that are always already contested, we can begin to appreciate the complementarity.
Second, recognition of the contingent nature of identity does not delegitimize identity claims marshaled by Tibetans for their cause. It simply draws attention to the strategic nature of such claims. This position is possible if one adopts a discursive approach to identity that sees identification not as an artifact or an outcome but as a construction, as something always in process. Though not without its determinate conditions of existence, including the material and symbolic resources required to sustain it, identification is in the end conditional, inevitably lodged in contingency. "Identification is, then, a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption" (Hall 1996b, 3). We need to recognize that its popular usage notwithstanding, the concept does not signal a stable core of self, unfolding from beginning to end through all the vicissitudes of history without any substantial change (see Kaul 2007). On the contrary, we should accept that identities are always and already fragmented and fractured; they are never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices, and positions.
Butler's idea of performativity is helpful here. As she succinctly puts it, "Identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results" (1990, 25). [90] The production of the (gendered) subject is not a singular or deliberate "act," but rather the "reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names" (Butler 1993, 2). Applying this idea to the Tibetan case, we may see Tibetan identity as constituted by particular processes and practices and not as some universal, timeless fixed thing. Tibetan nationalism is conjured up by the anticipation of an essential Tibetanness, and to be effective, it needs to be repeated again and again; it is a process, not a product. It is this "anticipation" of the essence of Tibet, an essential Tibetanness, that is constitutively linked up with Exotica Tibet and Tibetanness.
Rather than seeing the identity question as a matter of simple historical investigation, we can deal with it in terms of the deployment of resources of history, language, and culture in the process of becoming rather than being. The idea of symbolic geography encapsulates such a discursive approach since instead of considering the ideas of locality and community as naturally given, it focuses on social and political processes of place making in Dharamsala. A discursive approach does not deny acts of communal political activism. It only reveals it as contingent, as strategic rather than as something unambiguously natural. The Tibetan claims to "an essential identity, while understandably deployed to serve as foundational identity claims" (Venturino 1997, 108), must be seen as always already imaginary, reified, constructed, and teleological and problematic.
Third, connected to the issue of a discursive approach to identity questions is an explicit recognition of the constitutive role played by Exotica Tibet. Representations, especially Western ones, have had a significant impact on the symbolic geography of Dharamsala and Tibetan identity discourses. The desire to secure patronage from sympathetic outsiders, elicit support for the Tibetan political cause, and make a living through commercial processes-all these forces have contributed to a self-reflexive adoption of Western representations of Tibetans as a part of Tibetanness. Image has been translated into identity. The representation of Tibetans as inherently religious and spiritual has certainly contributed to the mushrooming of yoga classes, retreat centers, and meditation schools in Dharamsala. At the same time, we must keep in mind the fact that the Tibetan exiles are not unique in that Western representations have a major effect on identity practices. As Huber (2001) argues, recent reflexive notions of Tibetan culture and identity witnessed in exile should be understood as products of a complex transnational politics of identity within which populations such as the Tibetan exiles are increasingly representing themselves and being represented by others. One such identity discourse, which Huber (1997) highlights, is connected to environmentalism. The presence within Dharamsala of the Green Hotel and Green Cyber Cafe, Vegetarian Health Food, and the like may be understood as a conscious desire to appropriate this particular discourse as a part of identity formation. The symbolic geography of Little Lhasa questions the premise that Tibetans are innocent victims-"prisoners of Shangri-la." Instead, even while acknowledging the unequal power relations, one must recognize that the Tibetan exiles possess agency and subjectivity (Klieger 2002a, Klieger 2002b; Korom 1997a, 1997b). This "agency is always and only a political prerogative" and "the constituted character of the subject is the very precondition of its agency" (Butler 1992, 13, 12, 17; emphasis in original).
Fourth, an integral part of Dharamsala as well as Tibetan dia-sporic identity is the crucial role played by the personality as well as the figure of the Dalai Lama. His smiling face adorns almost every establishment in the town, including the shops owned by non-Tibetans. [91] More than anything else, it is his residence here that contributes to the transformation of Dharamsala into Little Lhasa. He has a central position as the symbol of Tibet among Tibetan refugees and in the international media. Within discourses of Tibetanness, the Dalai Lama is "neither wholly transcendent (and thereby out of this world) nor wholly immanent (enmeshed in temporalities like the rest of us), but an ambiguous symbol imbued with the qualities of both" (Nowak 1984, 30). The fourteenth Dalai Lama has come to acquire an unprecedented position. He combines the role of the supreme leader of the entire Tibetan Buddhist community with the role of the chief spokesperson of Buddhist modernism. He is as much a world spiritual leader as the undisputed leader of the Tibetan political cause (Lopez 1998, 181-207). This mix of uniqueness with universalism and of a national cause with transnationalism is also underlined within Dharamsala's symbolic geography.
Fifth, though for the Tibetans the memory, the ideal, and the image of the land from which they have been exiled have been a vital force in the struggle for national recognition, the notion of return to the homeland is problematic. This problematization should not be seen in terms of a pessimistic scenario in which original Tibet has been destroyed and can never be retrieved. Instead, it guards against any naive imagination of a particularized space-time projection of Tibet as a timeless construct. Of course, this theme of return to the homeland is common to many exiled communities. The Palestinians are a good comparative example. In both cases one sees how the longing for home has changed over time from return to specific villages and particular dwellings to an emphasis on a collective national return to "the homeland" conceived more abstractly. Writing specifically about the Palestinians, Bisharat (1997) points out that in exile there occurs a displacement of a community, once understood as being rooted in particular localities, to the level of the nation (see also Bowman 1994). Homeland is conceived as a moral as well as a geographical location.
Last, the adoption of a different reading strategy also foregrounds the idea of Tibet as a reimag(in)ing construct. Following Anderson's theory of nations as imagined communities (1983), T
ibet can be seen as an imagined construct. However, the use of the form imagining rather than imagined indicates that the process of imagination is a continuous one. And then, since the Dharamsala establishment plays a crucial role in shaping this imagining process according to some particular images and representations, I put the "in" within parenthesis. The process is as much one of imaging as it is of imagining. The prefix "re" is to counter any sense of simplistic linearity associated with the process of imagining Tibet as a nation.
However, this theorization of Tibet as a discursive reimag(in)ing does not deny the real desires and feelings of the people toward it. Instead, it promotes a historicization and politicization of such desires and feelings. It calls for special attention to be given to the ways spaces and places are made, imagined, contested, enforced, and reimagined. One needs to accept that given the limited vocabulary available to Tibetans to espouse their cause in the international arena, the use of the somewhat old-fashioned concept of nationalism is perfectly understandable. As Kibreab points out, in a world where rights such as equal treatment, access to resources, and freedom of movement are apportioned on the basis of territorially anchored identities, the identity people gain from their association with a particular place is an indispensable instrument (1999). Though a reimag(in)ing construct, Tibet has a real impact on the lives of many people, and this itself provides legitimacy to those struggling for the self-determination of Tibetans. My discursive theorization does not render this struggle problematic. At the theoretical level it calls for a reconceptualization of basic themes involved in the articulation of a Tibetan identification process as encapsulated within Dharamsala's symbolic geography. And at the level of political praxis, it simply warns against any naive ideas about nationalism, return to homeland, and the like.
CONCLUSION: AFFIRMING TIBETANNESS THROUGH ITS PROBL EMATIZATIO N
By way of a conclusion, I would like to clarify that this postcolonial reading based on a different understanding of the words dharam-shala/dharmashala should not be seen as a simple alternative to the more common story discussed earlier in the chapter, for the political practices embedded within Dharamsala's symbolic geography defy any clear categorization in either of the two conceptual frameworks. My approach appreciates the practical need for espousing Tibetan identity as a strategic essentialism. At the same time, it highlights the need to recognize at a theoretical level the contingent character of these claims. The clear emphasis in my approach is on the "strategic" in the strategic essentialism. A sophisticated postcolonial theoriza-tion of Tibetanness in terms of symbolic geography facilitates such a two-pronged approach, while at the same time recognizing the arbitrariness involved in any distinction between theory and practice or between cultural and political identity discourses. Apart from other things, it also recognizes the politics of Exotica Tibet-the constitutive relation between Western representations and Tibetan identity discourses, that is, between Exotica Tibet and Tibetanness.
7. Conclusion
To "forget IR theory" (Bleiker 1997) is not to ignore it, for any such attempt will leave intact a disciplinary endeavor that has significant purchase on the understanding and construction of world politics. Rather, this forgetting involves unprivileging the dominant modes of analysis of world politics and learning to think differently. From an IR perspective, the learning process within this book has involved journeying into the exotic thoughtscape of social theory, postcolonialism, diaspora studies, cultural theory, colonial discourse analysis, and Tibetology. The journey led to a shedding of old baggage and picking up of new; it had temporary halts but only an arbitrary beginning and an even more contingent end. The book is, in this sense, a journal of a theoretical and empirical journey.
My analysis has involved three "de-"s (deparochializing, de-constructive analysis, and description) and three "re-"s (representation, reimagining, and retheorizing). After introducing the Tibet question, I set up the argument for a postcolonial IR that seeks to reveal the ethnocentrism and lack of concern for the issues central to the lives of peoples in the non-West of mainstream (and sometimes even critical) IR and to deparochialize them. The rest of my endeavor does not always "use" insights from postcolonialism and IR theory but is inspired by postcoloniality (a postcolonial critical attitude). The examination of the theme of representation in chapter 1 foregrounds my theoretical belief in the discursive constitution of reality. Representation, especially the Western representation of the non-West, is central to the study of IR as it is a crucial dynamic of world politics, often supporting the dominant truth regimes and structures of power. Critical IR has focused mainly on the constitutive function of representation in generating and sustaining particular foreign policy regimes and on the identity politics of the repre-senter. What about the impact of Western representations on the represented? By ignoring this, critical IR leaves itself open to the charge of West-centrism. This work seeks to rectify this and through the empirical study of Western representations of Tibet highlights its productive and restrictive effects on the non-West. Exotica Tibet is theorized in terms of its poetics and politics.
Chapter 2 offers a deconstructive analysis of Western representational practices by studying some common rhetorical strategies of representation. Chapter 3 is a description of how Western interaction, seen as imperial encounter, has a constitutive relation with the imagination of Tibet. Chapter 4 charts the formation of Tibet as a geopolitical entity within the wider context of Western theory and praxis of sovereignty, imperialism, and foreign policy. Finally, the next two chapters retheorize Tibetanness and argue that Tibet is a reimag(in)ing construct. Thus, a postcolonial analysis of the poetics and the politics of Exotica Tibet underlines the importance of critically studying Western representations of the non-West within a deparochialized IR.
My effort here has been to challenge the geographical parochialism of both the mainstream and critical IR endeavors. "Tibet" here stands not only for those who identify with it (the Tibetans) but also as a challenge to critical endeavors in IR as well as to postcolonial theorizing. My attempt has been not only to promote a dialogue between postcolonial theory and IR theory but, more important, to adopt a postcolonial critical attitude-that is, postcoloniality-to offer new, innovative ways of doing IR analyses. Here I am aware that I am deploying "Tibet" to critique certain ways of thinking, in a manner somewhat similar to Orientalists for whom "Tibet" has been only a category to be used, to be deployed for self-serving purposes. My Orientalizing gesture reflects partly my failure to break out of the pernicious mode of thought set up by the dominant West and partly a failure of postcolonial thinking that is forced to respond to the West and its knowledge in its own language, on terms set by it. Where my use is different is in a self-consciousness and reflexivity about it, in a strategic deployment that seeks to write back at dominant modes of analyses and challenge the provincialism-in-the-guise-of-universalism characterizing these modes. An awareness of ethno-centrism leads to greater self- reflexivity, sensitivity for the Other, and an openness to alternative theoretical perspectives. My own position as a non-Tibetan interested observer is acknowledged.
This work is a call for a postcolonial IR theoretical approach, the space for which has been cleared by the postpositivist debates. It challenges the commonplace ignorance of the history of imperialism and colonialism in the analysis of supposedly "intractable" political problems in the postcolonial world. It highlights the centrality of the concept of representation to the Western enterprise of knowledge production about its Others. It bares the "real" impact of rhetorical utterances and practices. Geopolitical Exotica explores asymmetrical power relations in the discursive production of "Tibet" as a specific site of West-non-West encounter in and beyond the twentieth century. It emphasizes the (re)productive relation between representation and identity and performs a deconstructive cultural analysis of Western images of Tibet by looking at the poetics of representation, which entails recognition of the contingency of identity without giving up the notio
n of agency. It theorizes Tibetan identity discourses as constitutively and performatively produced in relation to Western imaginaries and imageries, the politics of representation. Though Orientalism finds itself "constantly appropriated, reworked, and re-accentuated in the utterances of others" (Ha 2000, xii), the asymmetrical operation and effect of the power-knowledge nexus remains its chief characteristic.
Postcolonial IR thus offers an effective understanding of the political and productive effect of Western representational practices, especially on non-Western people. The poetics (the "how" question) and politics ("what impact" question) of Western representations are legitimate and vital areas of inquiry for IR because these support particular foreign policy regimes and have a productive effect on the identities of political actors. Postcolonial IR appreciates the importance of popular culture for our understanding of world politics. It alerts us to the fact that what we accept as real is a "changeable and revisable reality… Although this insight does not in itself constitute a political revolution, no political revolution is possible without a radical shift in one's notion of the possible and the real" (Butler 1999, xxiii).
How can we understand more effectively the ways in which Western representations of the Other ("the Exotic") generate vexing political problems in the contemporary postcolonial world? In order to get at this question, I have utilized resources from International Relations, postcolonial and cultural theory, and Tibetan studies to interrogate Exotica Tibet in terms of its poetics (how Tibet is represented) and its politics (what impact these representational regimes have on the represented). I have sustained an empirical study of one specific geopolitical exotica-Exotica Tibet-to substantiate theoretical arguments about the role of representation and identity in the theory and praxis of world politics.
Geopolitical Exotica Page 17