Bollywood memories of brand Australia: an archive of the neoliberal present

Abstract

In the last few years, there has been a minor explosion of Indian cinema-related events in Australia. How may we read this contemporary presence of Bollywood in Australia as a neoliberal archive of Australia's multicultural present? How is Bollywood part of an affective biopolitics generated in the main by members of the South Asian diaspora? How does this recent interface between multiculturalism, neoliberalism and Bollywood mark becoming Indian in Australia? This becoming Indian in Australia is fraught as the distinctions of the lived memories of the Indian diaspora in Australia compete with unlived memories of belonging, generated in effect by state forms of branding Australia and Indians in Australia. Drawing on the concept of Bollywood as an assemblage, this paper seeks to address these questions in a critical manner.