ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam (M.I.A) utilizes a form of guerilla pedagogy, digital ruckus that both reinforces and refutes the identification of refugee chic. It illustrates the complicated tensions of racialized and gendered subjectivity in the context of the globalization of media and post-9/11 identity politics using a transnational feminist framework. The chapter introduces a feminist transnational approach to racialized girlhood. It discusses M.I.A. as a cultural production of racialized girlhood through two specific figurations: the terrorist slut, and the Tamil Hottie. The chapter explores how M.I.A. contributes, both literally and figuratively, to burgeoning public discourses on gendered transnational citizenship. The art of M.I.A. represents new generation of youth-produced popular media that reflects the kind of fluid ethno-scapes made possible by the transnational migration of cultural, informatic, ideological, technological, and financial forms of currency and recognition. The chapter also discusses how alternative patriarchies operate to construct racialized discourses on girlhood.
