'Tiger in Paradise': Reading Global Mauritius in Shifting Time and Space

This article consists of a reading of global financial magazines and tourist literature in the context of Mauritius' more recent self-promotion as an economic ‘Asian tiger' miracle. This new representation signals a burgeoning hybrid postcolonial Mauritian identity that re-inscribes Asian diasporic history. Such a re-alignment decenters colonial Europe and regionalises Mauritius as part of Asia. Mauritian modernity is engendered by neo-Orientalist narratives inspired by a resurgence of colonial constructions of Mauritius as an erotic paradise, and a recycling of Asian tiger ethos. Collapsing Mauritius into the tiger cultural geography is particularly problematic for a multicultural nation since this emergent self-representation denies the contribution of people of non-Asian heritage. Inspiring itself from Asian ‘alter/native' modernity, Mauritian global modernity also derives from a male-oriented capitalist paradigm and a subscription to discriminatory macho Asian tiger ideologies. It is the jingle ‘Tiger in paradise' (Financial Times , 27 September 1994) which, I will conclude, most clearly interweaves the ambivalent colonial and diasporic constituents of postcolonial Mauritius.