In-Between Images: Everyday Performance, Generational Succession, and the Shaping of Polonia

This dissertation is an interpretive ethnography and autoethnography of how my interlocutors and I experience and perform the reality of migranthood as members of Polonia, the Polish migrant diaspora. I analyze how we imagine, devise, and perform the reality of living in-between spaces, places, and times using Julie Cruikshank’s lens that “life is lived like a story” and Lisa Stevenson’s “image as method.” I interpret lifeworld images that my interlocutors and I consider pertinent to our lives and Polonia, especially our memories and heritage, dreams of the future, and present experiences of generational succession between baby boomers and millennials. I combine self-interpretation of mystory with insights from analyzing fieldwork conducted with other Polish Canadians residing in Brant.

Drawing from theory by Gregory L. Ulmer and Norman K. Denzin, I argue that, through everyday performance, our lives are simultaneously shaped by and contribute to shaping Polonia. That is, we perform our lifeworlds in ways that are in tandem and at odds with how we imagine them, individually and collectively. These performances then have affective potential to reinforce and alter our imaginaries and those of others.

Furthermore, while there is a certain level of passing down of images through generational succession—as so-called Polonia heritage—these imagistic landscapes undergo substantial re-articulations as they succeed. As a result, I conclude that Polonia remains in the crisis stage of a Turnerian social drama as each generation seeks to shape Polonia in its image.

I resolve the above insights by arguing that life is (not) lived like a story. Through everyday performance and generational succession, we are authors of our lifestories while simultaneously influencing the lifeworlds of others. Instead, this research reveals that my interlocutors and I live in-between images.

This research was conducted in Brantford, Ontario between January 2016 and March 2017 with 14 principal interlocutors—six millennials (in addition to myself) and six baby boomers (in addition to my mother)—who self-identify as either Polish or Polish Canadian. I also conducted participant observation and interviews with members of a Polonia cultural centre in Brantford.