The Container and Itinerant Identity in Amal Sewtohul’s Made in Mauritius

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In the wake of the emergence of space as a major theoretical and philosophical concern for artists, theorists, and philosophers, there has been a recent resurgence of studies and theories on space, spatiality and place in academia. Major theorists of space tend to view space and spatiality as social and cultural productions and are more interested in the lived practices, symbolic meanings, and significations of spaces. Inspired by the recent reflections on space, this article examines the representation of the space of the container in Amal Sewtohul’s Made in Mauritius. Drawing upon Edward Soja’s notion of ‘thirdspace’ and Michel de Certeau’s ‘practice place’ and ‘bricolage’ that transform space by engaging it performatively, I argue that this space becomes a site where culture is played out and performed in a manner that ‘enables other positions to emerge, displacing the histories that constitute it’ (The Location of Culture), in order to set up new contact zones that resist structures of authority and propose new initiatives. These performatively engaging spaces are characterized by a certain multi-sitedness and lead to the construction of ‘polymorphous subjects’ (Ella Shohat) that circulate within diverse cultures and territories, continually attempting to escape fixed definitions and rigid beliefs, and in so doing, redefine notions of identity and belonging.