Elasticity Inhabited

Abstract

In critiquing the trope of resilience, Kaiama Glover has defined it as “elasticity,” “the capacity to resume an original form, or a condition.” She points to how that term has been used “gleefully” when talking about migrants and refugees, as “a category” that is “long applicable to Haitians, as they are, if nothing else, resilient.” This paper proposes an exploration of elasticity as a possible site of imagining an “otherwise” of the diasporic experience: an open space in which both the nostalgia of the old home and the experiencing of the new one can be engaged with and nurture a new sense of self.