Mourning or Melancholia ?

[eva_rajzman]

In his early work, Freud distinguishes between mourning and melancholia, the former one being the “healthy process of grieving”, letting go the lost object and moving on, while the latter implies holding onto the object, not letting go and thus experiencing pain constantly.
One of the links between “Bend it like Beckham”, “Anita and me”, Yasmine Hai’s memoir and Nitin Sawhney’s song is this constant ambivalence and dilemma for migrants between letting go or holding onto their culture.

As Sara Ahmed argues and criticizes, there is in the mainstream white discourse the idea that holding onto another culture is a barrier to integration and thus to “happiness”, for the nation as a whole. This is very striking in France, where they argue that it creates what they call “communautarisme” and that it is a risk for the unity and indivisibility of the French Republique, this is also the ground on which they have based the concept of “laicité”.

In some cases, first generations of migrants believe that this is the way to happiness for their family, and probably to protect their children from racism they have experienced.
In Sawhney’s song, I think the opening is about his parents having mourned their culture to seek this happiness. This is also what Yasmin Hai relates in her memoir, as her Pakistani parents really want her to assimilate and be a “good English girl”. They want her to mourn the culture and stop speaking Urdu, although this was the only language her mother spoke. Her father believed this was the way to be happy in this country. Still, he forbids her to watch some English programs because it is not the “good” kind of western culture. A form of ambivalence can also be seen in Yasmin’s words “I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about how English I was”. She doesn’t feel like she will ever belong in England but she also had to let go her Pakistani culture. This is what Sara Ahmed calls the “affect alien”. She was forced to mourn a culture but she is melancholic in the way that something is missing, she feels an emptiness in her identity as she doesn’t fully feel English.

In other cases, like in “Anita and me” or “Bend it like Beckham”, the situation is different but the ambivalence is still there. Meena and Jess believe they will find happiness in assimilation, in proximity with whiteness but they still want to be close to their family and culture and they struggle to find this balance, often restricted by their parents.The ambivalence is also present for the parents who want their kids to be happy but also want to preserve them from an oppressive white world. Ahmed criticizes the way “Bend it like Beckham” conveys the moral that migrants should get rid of this melancholia and let go of past experiences of racism and open their heart to white culture in order to reach happiness.

I feel like second generations tend to be more stuck in this in-between two cultures trying to find a balance, while first generations tend to be more radical in mourning or preserving their culture. But in some of these examples, it is interesting to see how parents can rethink their positions and ideas through their children's experiences.