Forgetting to Remember, Re-membering to Forget: Cosmopolitan Hostipitality in Southeast Asian Narratives of Migration

Situated at the intersection of memory and migration studies, this paper compares cultural production in Southeast Asia, particularly Espia’s film Transit (2013), Lian Gouw’s novel Only a Girl, and Clemènt Baloup’s graphic novel Vietnamese Memories to make an argument for how memory mediates movement, particularly a movement that is out-of-sync. The aforementioned cultural texts demonstrate how those living amidst the asynchronous flow of diaspora seem to perceive the present retroactively. The inherited memories of their absent homelands allow them to conceptualise a dynamic understanding of both identity and home. Bringing into dialogue Derrida’s hostipitality with Appiah’s cosmopolitanism reveals how hostilities embedded in the notion of welcome can be overcome by an understanding that everyone is a “cosmopolitan patriot.” In reading Derrida alongside Appiah, this paper concludes that in the process of re-rooting themselves in a host society, acts of remembrance function to anchor the diasporic subject allowing for a reconciliation of the conceptual worlds of their past, the present wherein they live, and a seemingly uncertain future.