ABSTRACT

This article problematises the neo-colonial legacies of Westernised education in the experiences of empowerment, disempowerment and identity negotiations of two immigrant academic women often positioned as ‘elite’ transnationals in Australia. Through positioning theory and postcolonial theory as frameworks, critical autoethnography as a research method shapes our personal accounts within two postcolonial contexts (India and Mauritius). We explore the tensions and dualities of race, class, ethnicity and gender engendered through an anglicised education. Our empowerment manifests as privilege and access to knowledge and opportunities for transnational mobility. We unpack the gradual erosion of our cultural rootedness and a renegotiation of our migrant identities entailing both submissiveness and resistance. Situating education as a force in our lives, we query whether it is an ‘empowerment tool’ concomitantly creating and deleting elements of our cultural history OR reclaiming the paradoxes of privilege and ‘disempowerment’ shaped by a neo-colonial education?

摘要

本文在两名经常被定位为澳大利亚“精英”跨国人士的移民学术女性的赋权，剥夺权力和身份谈判的经历中，对西化教育的新殖民遗产提出了质疑。通过将定位理论和后殖民理论作为框架，批判性自传民族志作为一种研究方法在两个后殖民背景下（印度和毛里求斯）塑造了我们的个人叙述。我们探索通过英语化教育产生的种族，阶级，种族和性别的紧张和对偶。我们的赋权表现为特权和获得知识和跨国流动机会的机会。我们揭露了文化根源的逐渐侵蚀以及对移民身份的重新谈判，这既使人顺从又使人反抗。