diaspora identity essay

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Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora

In this Book

Stuart Hall
Published by: Duke University Press
Series: Stuart Hall: Selected Writings
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Title, Copyright
A Note on the Text
pp. vii-viii
Acknowledgments
General Introduction
Part I | Prologue: Class, Race, and Ethnicity
One. Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity [1986]
Part II | Deconstructing Identities: The Politics of Anti-Essentialism
Two. Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities [1991]
Three. What Is This "Black" in Black Popular Culture? [1992]
Four. The Multicultural Question [2000]
Part III | The Postcolonial and the Diasporic
pp. 135-140
Five. The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power [1992]
pp. 141-184
Six. The Formation of a Diasporic Intellectual: An Interview with Stuart Hall by Kuan-Hsing Chen [1996]
pp. 185-205
Seven. Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad [1999]
pp. 206-226
Part IV | Interviews and Reflections
pp. 227-234
Eight. Politics, Contingency, Strategy: An Interview with David Scott [1997]
pp. 235-262
Nine. At Home and Not at Home: Stuart Hall in Conversation with Les Back [2008]
pp. 263-300
Part V | Epilogue: Caribbean and Other Perspectives
pp. 301-302
Ten. Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life [2007]
pp. 303-324
pp. 325-340
Place of First Publication
pp. 341-342

Diaspora, memory and identity : a search for home

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Acknowledgments Introduction VIJAY AGNEW Part 1: Diaspora and Memory * Language Matters VIJAY AGNEW * Memories of Internment: Narrating Japanese-Canadian Women's Life Stories PAMELA SUGIMAN * Wounding Events and the Limits of Autobiography MARLENE KADAR Part 2: History and Identity * Memoirs of a Sirdar's Daughter in Canada: Hybridity and Writing Home RISHMA DUNLOP * Ghosts and Shadows: Memory and Resilience among the Eritrean Diaspora
ATSUKO MATSUOKA and JOHN SORENSON * A Diasporic Bounty: Cultural History and Heritage VIJAY AGNEW Part 3: Community and Home * Diaspora and Cultural Memory ANH HUA * Gendered Nostalgia: The Experiences of New Chinese Skilled Immigrants in Canada IZUMI SAKAMOTO and YANQIU RACHEL ZHOU * 'I Feel Like a Trini': Narrative of a Generation-and-a-Half Canadian 230 CARL E. JAMES * The 'Muslim' Diaspora and Research on Gender: Promises and Perils HAIDEH MOGHISSI * The Quest for the Soul in the Diaspora
VIJAY AGNEW Afterword SUSAN E. BABBITT Contributors.
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Diaspora, Memory, and Identity

A search for home.

Edited by: Vijay Agnew
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Language: English
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Copyright year: 2005
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
Main content: 260
Published: December 22, 2005
ISBN: 9781442673878

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The Concept of Home in Diaspora

The nature of diasporic communities is one of key areas of interests in diaspora studies. The concept of home in diaspora studies is a question of identity and belonging. The enthusiasm of migrating out of homeland, the resolve to maintain identities and the intention to extend solidarity with the local and the transnational encompass the diasporic experience. While the diasporic communities share a sentimental affection with the homeland with an eagerness to maintain their cultural identities some uphold the desire to return to their homelands. This essay is an attempt to investigate how varied diasporic experiences and the changing transnational interconnections impact and shape the concept of home in diaspora.

Related papers

Definitions of 'diaspora' differ. However, one commonly accepted feature of the concept is that diaspora assumes return and, as emphasized in the paper, return is permanent, even if it is virtual or metaphorical. This, probably, is the main factor that distinguishes diasporas from communities who only carry ethnic heritage and traditions, without maintain connections to the homeland. Unlike cases of only ethnic communities, diasporans maintain links to the homeland on a permanent basis, aimed at preserving the national identity and preventing assimilation. Diasporas, being physically in the host country, at the same time, maintain loyalty to the homeland, and loyalty to the non-territorial transnation prevails. The relationship between diaspora and the homeland is changing over time as a result of various changes and transformations, in particular, political, such as achieving political independence and establishment of a sovereign nation-state. Many nation-states, who have ...

Does diaspora imply a homeland? For a number of scholars who pioneered the growth of diasporic studies in the 1990s this was the sine qua non of the concept. Under the weight of social constructionist critics, who sought to deconstruct the foundational ideas of homeland and community, more complex and vaguer ideas of homeland and home emerged. These are characterized here as ‘solid’, ‘ductile’ and ‘liquid’, on a diminishing scale from historical reality to postmodern virtuality. I show that all three versions of home/homeland have some historical and empirical support, though resist pure social constructivism. There is also some evidence that solid notions homeland are gaining increasing attention.

Diaspora Studies, 2020

This paper suggests that images and stances associated with the diaspora in the homeland culture offer a unique prism through which internal tensions in homeland collective identity may be dissected and understood. We believe it is worthwhile to broaden the spectrum of inquiry of recent research on quantifiable diaspora economic and political involvement in homeland nationstates to the inherently fluid, abstract realm of cultural representation. The paper implements this research orientation by offering a preliminary discussion of homeland-construed representations and stances of the diaspora, based on the case study of Israel. Israel is a particularly useful case for our purposes because of the degree to which the diaspora serves as a ‘significant other’ for the homeland national culture. Our claim is that two main prisms, or frames of reference, which we label as ‘minority stance’ and ‘authenticity,’ designate Israeli views of its diaspora that prove fundamental to Israeli national self-definition. The degree of authenticity ascribed in Israeli culture to representations and practices associated with the diaspora is contingent on the positive or negative value attributed to them as embodying a ‘minority stance,’ that is, to the diaspora giving central importance to its environing host society in its own identity and self-understanding. Using Greek culture as a comparative point of reference, we suggest that these prisms may be but two examples of various homeland ‘filters’ on the diaspora experience – filters which pertain to the homeland society’s ongoing internal negotiations of identity and symbolic boundary work.

The question of ‘diasporic identities’ has been a field of academic study, political debate and public controversy for a long time. Among several shortcomings in much of the existing writing is a certain identity fuzziness that should be addressed at several levels. It is of paramount importance to examine the concrete entity of diasporic identification. In this regard diasporic-ethnic, -national, and -civic identifications can be distinguished, depending on whether we consider individuals in their capacity as (a) members of the ethnic community in the country of residence; (b) having bonds with the place of origin as a nation and the people living there; or (c) being part of the state of origin with rights and responsibilities towards state institutions. Further, well-defined categories of analysis have to be adopted. For transnational activities with regard to the country of origin, self-categorization and commitment deserve particular attention. Recognizing the constructed character of ethnic, national and civic identifications, the determinants of their formation and change over time have to be examined carefully. With regard to potential or actual conflicts between multiple identifications, it is essential to re-examine critically many propositions about rival loyalties and competing identifications based on the adopted categories of analysis. Keywords: diaspora, national identity, ethnic identity, migration, transnationalism, identity theory

The idea of ‘home’ is an eluding concept in the history of human civilization which is imbued with meaning in the subjective imagination of the individual. It is intrinsically and inevitably associated with the practices of exclusion and inclusion operating in an individualistic space of psychic investment under given circumstances. The homeless dialectics of the postmodern diasporic world triggers a sense of ‘homing desire’ in the people displaced from their native land of identification in a range of differential and discursive possibilities. The diasporic subjects thus feel a constant urge to reconstruct their own image of the homeland creating an imaginative space for themselves reconfiguring the inner landscapes of their mind. The paper thus aims at exploring and relocating ‘home’ in diasporic imagination translating diasporic desire with its multiple and conflicting cultural identities that defies strict premise and connotation in the problematic dialectics of permeable patterns of cultural representation.

isara solutions, 2019

What is migration? Is it bad? Is it good? How does it affect the immigrant? Is the consequence of migration a feeling of displacement? Or does it differ individual to individual? As no two personalities are alike, as no two mindsets are the same, as no two human backgrounds are similar, what after effects does an act of migration have? It’s a globally heard saying that home is where the heart is… So, how does the heart take a sudden radical shift in location and life? And why do individuals migrate, leaving behind their comfort zones? And since when have people been doing it, this moving from one place to another? Added to the notion of migration is this widely used term in the modern era (maybe earlier too but on a lesser scale than when diasporic literature became a raging trend), ‘diaspora’. So, ‘migration’ and ‘diaspora’: Are their connotations and denotations similar? Are they interlinked? Or are they simply synonymous? Let us explore, and maybe attempt to define and demarcate migration and diaspora: their essences, nuances and effects on the human mind, personality and culture.

Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 2013

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Diaspora by Jemima Pierre LAST REVIEWED: 30 September 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0091

Diaspora is a term used to describe the mass, often involuntary, dispersal of a population from a center (or homeland) to multiple areas, and the creation of communities and identities based on the histories and consequences of dispersal. The term is not new; it is a Greek word once solely used to describe Jewish, Greek, and Armenian dispersions—what some scholars often describe as the “classic” diasporas. However, diaspora has gained currency recently as both a conceptual and analytical tool to explain various practices of global movement and community formation. The use of diaspora emerged in various academic disciplines in the second half of the 20th century both in conjunction with and as an alternative to other terms expressing global shifts in movement and identity formation, sharing meaning with a broader semantic field that includes such terms as transnationalism and globalization. Diaspora entered the anthropological lexicon through the early ethnographic and theoretical work on the communities of African descent in the New World and has since attained new epistemological and political resonances. The term has been deployed within the discipline to cover a wide range of collectivities and experiences—a catchall to represent diverse movements and dislocations, and myriad forms of difference, heterogeneity, and, in particular, hybridity. Indeed, as exposed in Yelvington 2001 (cited under General Overviews ), new anthropological concerns with concepts of cultural hybridity, syncretism, and cultural politics owe a great deal to this early African diaspora anthropology scholarship. Diaspora provided a counterpoint to established disciplinary paradigms regarding the formation—and stability—of cultural groupings, unhinging groups from determinate locales and stressing geographical and sociocultural heterogeneity. Thus, a whole new genre of ethnographic studies has been informed by conceptualizations of diaspora, though the term has also been used across the various subdisciplines—in archaeology, linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, and folklore. But even as anthropology grapples with the term’s constantly shifting deployments and varying critiques, diaspora continues to be marked by the standard theoretical concerns of the dialectic of homeland to diaspora; the relationship of the nation-state to diaspora; and the contemporary politics of global population movement—particularly of exiles, refugees, and immigrants.

While there is not one major text that can easily serve as an overview of diaspora studies within anthropology, a number of essays and books together delineate its unwieldy parameters. Harrison 1988 , the introductory essay to a special “diaspora” issue of Urban Anthropology , and Yelvington 2001 , an essay for Annual Review of Anthropology , provide overviews of the concept that are specific to anthropology. Clifford 1994 , an exposition and analysis of the term, is probably the most cited across disciplines, while Vertovec 1997 delineates its three key complementary meanings. The review essay Axel 1996 is significant in that it links diaspora studies to cultural studies and area studies. The other texts that provide a general overview are two broad historical and conceptual studies of diaspora ( Cohen 1997 , Dufoix 2008 ). Brubaker 2005 traces the incredible dispersion of the term itself. It is important to note that criticism of the diaspora concept is usually built into its analysis.

Axel, Brian Keith. 1996. Time and threat: Questioning the production of the diaspora as an object of study. History and Anthropology 9.4: 415–443.

DOI: 10.1080/02757206.1996.9960888

Explores the difference in the production of the concept of diaspora in cultural studies and area studies. Demonstrates that area studies is concerned more with the diaspora-homeland relationship while cultural studies focuses on identity politics in the metropole or place of settlement. Argues that this difference challenges the basic premise of the concept. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Brubaker, Rogers. 2005. The “diaspora” diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28.1: 1–19.

DOI: 10.1080/0141987042000289997

Focuses on the dispersion of the semantic, conceptual, and disciplinary meanings of diaspora. Identifies three core elements that remain constitutive of diaspora despite the concept’s expansive reach: the idea of dispersion; the orientation to a real or imagined homeland; and the preservation of a distinctive diaspora identity. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas. Current Anthropology 9.3: 302–338.

Popular essay that examines the concept of diaspora as a “traveling” term that defies the any exclusivist paradigms used to denote the complexities of transnational identity formations. It traces and reviews the currency of diaspora theory and discourse through the popular invocations of diaspora in black British and anti-Zionist Jewish scholarship.

Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global diasporas: An introduction . Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203228920

Identifies the following types of diasporas: classical, victim, labor and imperial, trade, homeland, and cultural. The author also acknowledges that through these varied meanings, diasporas have some common elements—communities who live outside their native land and actively acknowledge and have some loyalty to such homelands.

Dufoix, Stéphane. 2008. Diasporas . Translated by William Rodarmor. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520253599.001.0001

A comprehensive review of the historical and current use of the concept of diaspora. Author considers two extremes of the concept’s definition—diaspora as catchall for displacement and connection to a homeland, or diaspora as reserved for specific populations—demonstrating continuities and modern differences in the of diaspora experience.

Harrison, Faye V. 1988. Introduction: An African diaspora perspective for urban anthropology. Urban Anthropology 7.2–3: 111–141.

A critical review of the diaspora concept in anthropology focusing on how urban anthropology can continue to benefit from the “diaspora framework.” Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Vertovec, Steven. 1997. Three meanings of “diaspora,” exemplified among South Asian religions. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 6.3: 277–299.

DOI: 10.1353/dsp.1997.0010

A theoretical discussion of diaspora, exploring the three complimentary meanings of the concept—diaspora as social form, diaspora as consciousness, diaspora as mode of cultural production—that have emerged in the recent literature. Available online by subscription.

Yelvington, Kevin. 2001. The anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean: Diasporic dimensions. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:227–260.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.227

Argues that the anthropology of the African diaspora is foundational to current anthropological theory—even as its practitioners have been elided from the core of the discipline. The essay resituates these early figures and early scholarship in its review of contemporary trends in the study of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

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Home and Away: The Dialectics of Diasporic Identity

Sarfaraz Nawaz

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Shibli National College, Azamgarh

What is a diaspora? Obviously, given the ambivalent positions that the diasporas hold straddling two worlds with an experience of dislocation common to them whatever be the nature of their movement from the home country, it is not an easy job to arrive at a definition which could suitably sum up their situation. The application of the word is no longer limited to the classic case of the Jews. Now it has acquired the status of a protean term or an umbrella concept encompassing various forms of dislocations which were previously explained under different heads as migrants, expatriates, exiles, refugees etc. But this would be an oversimplification to huddle them together under one category and not to explore the finer shades of variance within diaspora.

The question of identity and home is central to diaspora. As diaspora is characterised with a history of dislocation, displacement and relocation, there always emerges a question of belongingness and longing for home. The notion of home or homeland itself becomes quite problematic here. What are the things which constitute a home or an identity which could be established only in relation to home? Is there a home at all or an identity which is stable and fixed? How far the idea of a home away from home can provide a sense of belonging or spoil the process of making a home in a foreign land? The answers to these questions are, of course, not as easy as they seem to be. The present paper will try to problematise the diasporic identity in the light of two seminal essays- Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands” and Vijay Mishra’s “The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian diaspora.”

The idea of a home exists in the minds of diasporas constructed by the memories of the homeland before the time of migration and mostly it is a psychological construction produced by the question -where does one actually belong? A sense of displacement always haunts people who have moved to a place where they struggle to create a space for themselves. In their homeland they occupy a space which they call home. Home is not just a place-it is a space which allows them to enjoy freedom, safety, warmth, and recognition. They can easily share a common history and a common past with the community to which they belong. Their departure from this comfort zone is marked with a painful experience of rupture from many associations that home or the idea of home has created and has always satisfied their sense of belonging. A passport or a citizenship may provide official and legal rights to enter a foreign land and even settle there with equal rights along with its native inhabitants but acculturation is something hard to attain. The history of a shared past and its memories cannot be erased on the one hand and on the other the host country will not let the willing aspirants to easily merge and get assimilated with its culture so as to lose all distinctions and differences. In this globalised world it has become all the more difficult as the technology has virtually turned the whole world into something where space and time have been reduced to their minimum limits, even if it is in digital form. Community portals and social networking on internet thanks to the World Wide Web have contracted space to the computer or mobile screen and time to its smallest units. With such points of access and interaction available at the fingertips diasporas tend to create or reconstruct the virtual home away from home as if they were never separated from it and the focus has shifted from integration into the host culture to a strategically double dealing business where they can externally observe the larger principles of the hostland and its policy matters so as to fit into the pattern of life there but internally they can preserve or retain their distinct cultural identity through language, rituals and other social practices in their private groups.

Rushdie in his essay ‘Imaginary Homelands’ writes from the vantage point of a writer and tries to emphasise the point that having left the homeland and spent a considerable length of time in a foreign country, he finds himself incapable of having a “total recall” (11) of home. In the process to recall much is lost or altered or not fully recaptured, though the urge is very much there to reclaim. The alienation from the homeland results in its gradual disappearance from the landscape of mind and in such a situation recollection is in bits and pieces, in fragments, not whole. But because they are remains, one holds them all the more precious and invaluable (12). This argument helps us understand the dilemmas and confusions that surround the precarious positions of diasporas. But Rushdie does not approve of this looking back on homeland with a wistful eye and wrapping oneself up with nostalgic cover so as to enhance the feeling of alienation further. The practice of ghettoization and making private associations among diasporas leads to further complications regarding the question of their identity. This domain that they create, blocks many avenues of healthy negotiations with the culture of the host country. The tendency to safeguard their ethnic identity which diasporas consider as essential, true and fixed, jeopardises the prospects of the assimilative process through which they could actually participate in the social practices of the hostland without a sense of bafflement or discomfiture:

[O]f all the many elephant traps lying ahead of us, the largest and most dangerous pitfall would be the adoption of a ghetto mentality. To forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers, would be, I believe, to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South Africa is called the 'homeland'. (19)

But we need to give a second thought to the ideas put forward by Rushdie and his warning against the formation of associations and private ethnic groups among diasporas. The question that arises here is- What leads to this ‘ghetto mentality’? The obvious reply to this would, of course, be that it is the unwillingness or rather the refusal of the host country to grant the diasporas the cultural recognition and acceptance as part of the cultural fabric that can weave them together as citizens of the same country. Culture shock is one of the many experiences of the dispersed people but their gradual assimilation into the pattern of life in the hostland is what can provide them with a support system or a feel of home away from home. The dilemma of dwelling could be resolved only if the policies of the hostland for the diaspora encourage the immigrants to attain a comfort level with the native culture. The conflicts arising out of the cultural confrontations can be put to rest through a model of adoption and adaption in which the hostland needs to adopt its diaspora in the true sense of the term and the diaspora need to adapt to the cultural texture of the country. This is what Rushdie seems to imply when he says:

What does it mean to be 'Indian' outside India? How can culture be preserved without becoming ossified? How should we discuss the need for change within ourselves and our community without seeming to play into the hands of our racial enemies? What are the consequences, both spiritual and practical, of refusing to make any concessions to Western ideas and practices? What are the consequences of embracing those ideas and practices and turning away from the ones that came here with us? These questions are all a single, existential question: How are we to live in the world?

I do not propose to offer, prescriptively, any answers to these questions; only to state that these are some of the issues with which each of us will have to come to terms. (17-18)

Rushdie leaves us with no remedy. He wishes to see the dilemmas, doubts, uncertainties and bafflements pertaining to the question of diasporic identity by simplifying their complexity and reducing them to one general idea of an existentialist question. However, the real challenge lies in striking a balance between the cultures of the hostland and the homeland. But it would be a tight rope-walk to embark on such an enterprise with challenges and threats looming large which diasporas have to deal with. The collective memory of a shared history is something which cannot be erased completely and any sort of displacement, voluntary or forced carries with it some sense of loss which cannot be compensated. In case of the Indian diaspora, finding a home away from home becomes all the more challenging owing to the texture of the community ethos that is a typical characteristic of their cultural life as opposed to the European countries with a lifestyle governed by individualistic approach. The cultural ambience that has instilled in them a strong community sense, never allows them to be at ease in an environment where this notion of togetherness is threatened. Added to this, there is the attitude of the host land with its idea of nation which considers the natives as the real recipients of its privileges and original partakers in its story of achievement and glory excluding the outsiders. One can say that ‘due to this exclusivist fantasy of what the nation is, or ought to be, a painful exclusion of the diasporic or minority subject from the host-national collectivity becomes a part of the existing socio-political order’ leading ‘diasporas to preserve their own regressive myths of “imaginary homelands” uncontaminated by colonial modernity’(Giri 246). Thus the diasporas stand on a shaky ground finding it really hard to maintain a balance between the shared memory of their history which they cannot push into oblivion and the distance at which the host country would keep them when it comes to the question of national glory which the people of the nation think is purely shaped by them.

Vijay Mishra in his essay “The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian diaspora” looks closely at the migratory movements that formed the Indian diaspora beginning with the history of the Indian migrants who served as indentured labourers in various colonies of the British Empire to the ‘new Indian diaspora’ in developed countries like USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and UK. The socio-political conditions which governed the Indian indentured labourers working in South-East Asia (Malaysia, Singapore and Mynmar), in Fiji or in the West Indies create a history of exploitation with no prospects for their upward socio-economic mobility. The trauma which he associates with the diaspora is traced back to these Indian indentured labourer with an experience of severance and rupture from the homeland and the concomitant lasting sense of loss which could be, to some extent, compensated through “narratives of homeland” which are “constructed against the reality of the homelands themselves” ( Diasporic 423). On the contrary the new diaspora armed with education and professional skills negotiates a healthy relationship between the host land and the homeland. But it does not make them free from a feeling of unease and discomfiture over being not fully able to enjoy the ‘Nation Thing’ along with the people of the hostland. While theoretically engaging with the question of the Indian diaspora Mishra uses the term ‘imaginary’ both in its Lacanian sense and Zizekian sense which is the idea of homeland as ‘fantasy’ and as ‘Nation Thing’ to form his theory of the diaporic homeland. The tendency to fall back on the idea of nation as something remembered in the image of the way one desire it to be like is what constitutes homeland for the diasporas and their absence or exclusion from the glorious past of the host country is what necessitates it:

To address real diasporas does not mean that the discourses which have been part of diaspora mythology (homeland, ancient past, return and so on) will disappear overnight. Under a gaze that threatens their already precarious sense of the ‘familiar temporariness’, diasporas lose their enlightened ethos and retreat into discourses of ethnic purity that are always the ‘imaginary’ underside of their own constructions of homeland. ( Diasporic 426)

Rushdie’s idea of ‘imaginary homelands’ and Mishra’s theory of ‘diasporic imaginary’ are two positions that could be argued in relation to each other to carry this debate further. The two of them use the term ‘imaginary’ in the context of the idea of a home and a group of people living in displacement respectively. While Rushdie disapproves of the practice of ghettoization or group formation by diasporas as a means to preserve their ethenic identity, which he thinks leads to a continued feeling of isolation and alienation, Mishra, in order to come up with a sound theoretical position from which he could locate the Indian diaspora, considers it necessary to trace the history of dislocation of the Indian diaspora and to explore the links between the old diaspora of the early modernity and the new diaspora of the late modernity on the common ground of trauma and its heritage. He would like to consider the question in its totality and look at it also from the perspectives of the subaltern experience to have a holistic view of the real picture:

The Afghan refugee to Australia or the Fiji-Indian who is illegally ensconced in Vancouver is neither global nor (hyper) mobile. Her condition, unlike those of the upwardly mobile professionals in Silicon Valley, is not unlike those of people under indenture, for she has to work in sweatshops during graveyard shifts or, as in the case of the illegal, cannot leave Vancouver as she has no access to a passport. It is this complex diaspora story that I would want to tell with some of the privileges of the critical and self-reflexive native informant. ( Literature 4)

While one tries to constitute the diasporic identity, one cannot leave out certain subjects from the discourse and present an idea which uncovers half the picture and keeps much of it out of view. Even if the construction of homeland will be imaginary shaped by some “homing desire” (Brah 177), which is never ever a wish to return, the doubts and uncertainties will always be there in the diasporic subjects for the very reason that they are part of a history of displacement and that they previously had a home. In case of the new generation of diaspora, one finds that the new mediums of connectivity and speedy interactions available in the modern world have only served to re-enforce the community sense and strengthened the formation of “ethnic enclave[s]” ( Literature 14) which become a space to explore their identities:

Even as the hypermobility of postmodern capital makes borders porous and ideas get immediately disseminated via websites and search engines, diasporic subjects have shown a remarkably anti-modern capacity for ethnic absolutism. In part this is because diasporas can now re-create their own fantasy structures of homeland even as they live elsewhere. ( Literaure 17)

The recent theories tend to discuss diaspora in the celebratory spirits where the diasporic subjects are considered an ideal social formation doubly blessed and located at the “border zones where the most vibrant kind of interactions take place” ( Literature 1). But this cannot be generally applicable to all displaced people qualified with the label ‘diaspora’. The diaspora narratives traced back to the history of the displaced Indian Indentured servants reveal wounds which continue inflicting people in movements as they have been passed from generation to generation spiritually, if not physically. Not all are fortunate enough to secure lucrative positions in the host land and even if they have been, a sense of displacement, a feeling of severance from the homeland will haunt them. At the theoretical level one could promote the idea of diaspora being the ideal democratic situation enjoying the utmost freedom to exist without boundaries or territories, but one witnesses its “irreducible complexity at the level of lived social and political expression” ( Literature 2). The multicultural approach may help to an extent but as long as the host country keeps asking the disturbing question as Mishra informs us: “What shall we do with them?” ( Literature 7), the urge to reclaim a lost home, even if it does not exist any longer will persist in diasporas. To conclude in the words of Makarand Paranjape:

Though mobile, even affluent, the diaporic subject can neither return to the motherland nor fully belong to the adopted country. Indeed, Mishra tends to be somewhat sceptical of the label “diaspora” being applied to anyone who considers their dislocation in happier terms. Call them immigrants, trans-nationals, or global people, he seems to suggest, but not diasporic. That last term is reserved for an unhappier breed, whose growing fortunes cannot really compensate for the pain they continue to suffer, the never-ending shock of severance from their object of love, an object which no longer exists in reality and can therefore never be regained. (184)

Works Cited:

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge,1996. Print.

Giri, Bed Prasad. “The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Between Theory and Archive” Rev.of The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary , by Vijay Mishra. Diaspora 16. 1/2 (2007): 243-253. Project Muse .Web.30 Nov 2014.

Mishra, Vijay. “The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian diaspora.” Texual Practice 10.3 (1996): 421-47. Print.

…. The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary. USA: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Paranjape, Makarand. Rev. of The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary , by Vijay Mishra. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 40.1 (2009): 181-86. Web. 1 Dec. 2014.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. London: Granta Books, 1991. Print.

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DOI: 10.4324/9781315006161-10
Corpus ID: 158544002

Cultural Identity and Diaspora

Stuart Hall
Published in Undoing Place? 4 April 2014
Sociology, Art, History
Undoing Place?

1,985 Citations

Stuart hall, cultural studies and the new (carry/beyond) faculty of interpretation.

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Home Numéros 4 The Diaspora of the Term Diaspora...

The Diaspora of the Term Diaspora: A Working-Paper of a Definition

The quest for a definition of diaspora seems an impossible task because of the plurality of historical experiences, trajectories and agendas. One of the first approaches into this matter (Safran’s typology 1991) tried to build a definition based on the idea of trauma, exile and nostalgia. However, it became evident that producing a definition based on the memories of one diasporic community (the Jewish experience) and thus, turning it into a paradigm, could be less fruitful than one could imagine. New approaches then, explored through a more ethnographic approach different roots/routes (Clifford, 1997) pointing not only to the variety of the histories, but also to the wider politico-economic conditions that instigate transnational movements and also, the epistemological framework that tries to comprehend the latter with the re-launching of the term diasporas. This essay will focus on ethnographic experience in the Greek communities of Georgia and how they apprehend the term diaspora and when the latter becomes relevant to their lives and why. In other words, I will argue that the question of “when is diaspora”, instead of what and why, could be a more fruitful approach in examining the wider socio-political issues that urge for the re-emergence of diasporas.

1 In 2006 the Institute of Migration Policy organized a conference in Athens entitled “Migration in Greece: Experiences, Policies and Perspectives”. The conference attracted a surprisingly large number of participants working on different aspects of migration. I myself presented a paper concerning the connection between diaspora and migration, where I tried to critically discuss the traditional definition of diaspora in relation to national perceptions and ideologies. After the completion of the presentation, one of the participants, a political scientist, criticized my approach, because it questioned the fundamental definition of diasporas as communities cut off from a certain national body.

2 I started my paper with this brief story in order to illustrate that, despite the engagement of many different disciplines with diasporas, a definition of the term could still be a complex affair. Furthermore, it shows that any similar attempt should take into consideration historical perceptions of nationhood, ideologies of belonging, and disciplinary boundaries. On the other hand, the realization of this difficulty might function as common ground among diverse experiences often described as diasporas. In this context, a straightforward definition might be a chimera, but studying the conditions that produce diasporas as socio-political and academic categories might be a more fruitful approach.

1 The concept became central in the work of many postmodern thinkers because of its potential emanci (...)

3 Time and space are the most important ingredients in the formation, but also the evocation of diasporas. The two dimensions shape the horizon upon which diasporas conceive themselves as communities, emerge as alternative national Others and rise in everyday discourses as part of the ways people perceive their past and future. The discussion of the latter involves expectations and memories, desires and losses. It endows places with almost sacred or utopian dimensions and it turns others to real or symbolic prisons. Taking a closer look at the construction of these fears and desires would contribute to a “from below” understanding of Diaspora and will point out to the way these hopes and desires take part in the micro-politics of the post-national and global. 1 In this paper, I will start with a discussion of certain theoretical conceptualizations of diasporas and then, I will turn to my ethnographic experience illustrating how different perceptions of past and future correlate with wider spatio-temporal frameworks involving the notion of diasporas and various expressions of utopias.

Debating Diasporas: From Typologies to Postmodern Diasporas

2 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century , Massachussets, Harva (...)

4 There is an innate opposition embedded in the etymology of the term diaspora , of Greek origin, which reflects how double-edged the concept can be: dia- (a preposition which, when used in compound words, means division and dispersion) and –spiro (literally, to sow the seeds). This suggests, on the one hand, the idea of dispersion and on the other, that of stasis and stability (sowing seed, suggesting new life and new roots). In this part of my paper, I will concentrate on the dominant theoretical frameworks that attempted to offer a conceptualization of these contradictions. I will first look at Safran’s approach, often used to describe the historical diasporas and then, I will turn to the postmodern ideas of the concept, mainly following Clifford. 2

3 K. Toloyan, “The Nation and its Others” in Diaspora , 1 (1), 1997, pp. 3-7.

5 Since the 1990s with the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the following upheavals in world politics, diasporas have been reinvented in academia as “exemplary communities of the transnational moment”. 3 One of the first attempts to manage the proliferation of the use of the term belongs to William Safran. Based on the study of the Jewish historical experience, Safran tried to set the criteria in order to build a typology, according to which a community could be, or not, categorized as such. His criteria underlined the attachment of diasporas to an initial place of origin which through their collective memory and mythology is defined as their Homeland. At the same time, these communities grow a feeling of rejection in their host country, which increases their desire for return to the homeland. This return becomes an almost metaphysical destiny and contributes to the development of personal or more official ties with the homeland. Let’s try to test this view in the Greek communities of Georgia.

4 Liisa H. Malkki, “National Geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of nationa (...)

6 Safran’s argument is constructed around the notion of an original center, the homeland, which is naturalized and fixed. The etymological analysis of “diaspora” revealed an embedded dual metaphor between roots/routes. Research has pointed out that this binary opposition becomes as natural as subjective and political. 4 For instance, the communities of Pontic-Greeks I have worked with and that originate from the Black Sea coast of Turkey (known in the Greek historiography with the name of Pontos) have always presented an ethnological and linguistic diversity well documented in historiography since ancient and Byzantine times.

7 The administration system of the Ottoman Empire (millet), which was based on the religion of the infidel communities permitted, at least to a certain extent, the perpetuation of cultural diversity, as long as the communities fulfilled their tax obligations. This way, local identities often weaved around various cultural and linguistic idioms were preserved, something that was supported by the inexistence of a Greek national center until the 19 th century. The decentred character of these communities strengthened their appreciation of these local cultures expressed in their traditions, idioms and community histories. This factor makes any strict outline of the homeland as the initial center rather difficult, if not unproductive. Safran’s approach in the above ethnographic context might result in the homogenization of these diverse experiences or memories of dislocation both internally (social and cultural organization of the group) and externally (in comparison to other groups with similar historical backgrounds). Furthermore, it will naturalize the center (metropolitan Greece) which became important much later, as I will illustrate.

5 Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century .

8 In contrast, there is another intake in the definition of diasporas that tries to be anti-essentialist, in the sense of not connecting diasporic communities to a center/nation-state or the feeling of loss and return. Clifford considers diasporas as a new form of consciousness, collectivity and solidarity in a period that fragmentation and deterritorialization are praised as dominant paradigms. 5 What is essential for the definition of diasporas, here, is their comparability. In other words, what is important is to compare diasporas with national histories, indigenous ideologies, policies of assimilation in order to understand how in this context, dispersion is often stigmatized and marginalized. Against these forces of homogeneity, diasporic groups often find recourse to a discourse of nostalgia praising difference. In this way, diasporas form a reaction to the described political and cultural hegemony. On the other hand, they often construct relations to transnational movements (political, cultural, religious) that try to overcome the obstacles of national boundaries and territoriality.

6 See Benedict Anderson, “The New World Disorder”, in J. Vincent, The Anthropology of Politics. A Re (...)

9 Although this approach to diasporas might seem less homogenizing, a closer look might raise questions. Clifford invests too much in the hybrid and deterritorial character of diasporas. As experience has shown diasporas - the Greek example examined here is illustrative - are not indifferent to nationalism. 6 Furthermore, the double consciousness (here and there) attributed to these communities is rather presented as a general characteristic that endows diasporas with an emancipatory force from the boundedness and other constraints of nation-states. However, double consciousness is not a common idiom of all diasporas, but a feeling of belonging to certain contexts or one of rejection from others. Furthermore, this feeling does not necessarily exclude homogeneity. For example, the Greek-Georgians in Batumi (western Georgia) compare and consider themselves “more Greeks” than other Greek communities in Georgia, based on their own linguistic competence, in comparison to the Turkish-speaking Greeks (Romioi) of Tsalka (central Georgia).

7 Brent Hayes Edwards, “The uses of Diaspora”, Social Text, 19: 1, 2001, pp. 45-74, and Brent Hayes E (...)

10 In this part, I examined two dominant approaches to diasporas. The former depicts diasporas as an indivisible part of national histories, whereas the latter apply the term to various communities taking into account their deterritorialization and non-essentialist identity running often the risk of succeeding the opposite. The examination of the wider social, cultural and economic context that leads to the formation or evocation of diasporas is a crucial part of the quest for a definition. Brent Hayes Edwards argues for a definition, which “forces us to articulate discourses of cultural and political linkage only through and across difference”. 7 Edwards associates diaspora with cultural and political linkages across communities that retain their differences and distinctiveness, but also, they move beyond. I think that this point on difference is crucial for the discussion of the emergence and use of diasporas since it avoids the essentialist discourses mentioned before, without though excluding the use of such discourses by the diasporic groups themselves. Difference is a constitutive element of representation and as a result it is context-bounded and empties the discourse of diasporas from risky generalizations.

Other Places: The Greeks in Batumi

8 Achara comprises the following ethnic groups 93,4 % Georgians, 2.3 Armenians, 0,6 Greeks, 0,4 Abkha (...)

11 In the previous part, I tried to briefly present some dominant questions that relate to the discussion of diasporas and their examination. Here, I will turn to my ethnography in order to depict how Greek-origin Georgians discuss diaspora issues. I arrived in Batumi in May 2004 on the same day that the new Georgian president visited the city after the removal of the local governor, who had been accused of dictatorial tendencies. The new Georgian flag adorned all the public buildings and many private houses. Batumi is the capital of Achara, in south-western Georgia, which belonged to the Ottomans for almost 300 years (16 th -19 th centuries). As a result, it includes a considerable Muslim Georgian population. 8

9 Achara had been an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Soviet Georgia since 1921 (ASSR). After (...)

12 Achara was granted autonomous status in the Soviet period; after independence the authorities saw this as the cause of many problems. 9 Tensions were intensified by the former governor of Achara, Aslan Abashidze, whose family ties to the region were particularly strong; his family played a vital role in the liberation of Achara from the Ottomans. The region, and especially Batumi, is wealthy because of the port – the biggest in Georgia – and the customs posts along the border with Turkey, which control most of the cross-border trade. I was meeting a representative of the Greek local association. Ania arrivedright on time. She was in her early forties, well-dressed in professional attire, though less elegant than the women of Tbilisi. We left the hotel to visit the community club, owned by the association in Batumi.

13 ‘You know, Achara is special in Georgia because there are so many minorities living together’, Ania told me as we are walking towards Argos. ‘Do these minorities that you mentioned still lead a good life in Achara?’ I asked. ‘We have become fewer as you can imagine. But there are still minorities, Armenians, Ukrainians, and Russians. The president of our association is also the president of the committee of all the diasporic communities in Achara and our office here is the headquarters of the entire organisation’. ‘Is there a big association?’ I asked. ‘It used to have more members, but still. Membership is not restricted to Greeks. We have Armenians, Russians, and a French person married to a Pontic-Greek in our “Greek-Georgian Friendship Club” as we call our association.’ ‘Was there any specific reason for selecting this name?’ Ania responded enthusiastically. ‘It’s because I think that expresses our mission better. With all these various peoples living together in Achara, we influence each other and in the end you get an amalgam. Like the Greek-Georgians that live in Greece. Because, you know, we are not Greeks like you. We are Greek-Georgians.”

10 Michel Bruneau, “Ē diaspora tou Pontiakou Ellēnismou ke I Ellēnes tēs prōēn ESSR, ē edafikē skhesē” (...)
11 Artemis Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism. Mapping to Hellenism, Ithaca/ London: Cornell Universit (...)

12 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 , London: Abacus, 2002.

14 Batumi is represented in the Greek history of the Black Sea as the cradle of the most affluent Pontic communities in Georgia in the 19 th century. Families of merchants migrated to the area of Batumi between 1878 and 1881. 10 Since the 1830s though, these migrations were parallel to the foundation of the Greek state and a gradually developed program of Hellenization. The ‘Hellenic’ was constructed in the western literary imagination long before Greece came into existence as a state. As Leontis argues, for the western imagination of the 18 th century Hellas was a place that existed in reality, but at the same time it seemed to belong to the realm of myth, imagined as the space of the mythical European origin, the birthplace of European values and spirit. 11 This perception inspired almost all the educated, merchant Greek families living dispersed in the Balkans and the Black Sea region, and who started to feel more connected to each other because of the gradual opening of the market and the increasing commercial opportunities that took place in the region in the 18 th century according to Hobsbawm. 12

13 In the Greek historiography, the Greek diaspora is divided into three periods: 1. Late 14th century (...)
14 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of E (...)

15 In the 19 th century, with nationalism rampant throughout the West, the common goal of independence transformed these Greek groups into a ‘Greek diaspora’. 13 When Greece was founded during the 1830s, the relation with its diasporas changed because the gradually empowered national center wanted to be recognized as the only legitimate center of Greekness, something that launched the question of authenticity among the various Greek groups. 14 A Hellenization project (schools, Greek language books, centralized curriculum, Greek priests and teachers, opening of consulates in the areas where Greek diasporic communities lived) started to be applied among various diasporic communities, those in the Black Sea and the Caucasus included. Because of the social and economic background of the community in Batumi, a high number of its members either attended Greek schools in Pontos or sponsored similar ones in Georgia. The result of this fact is registered in what I have heard in Tbilisi, “If you want to see real Greeks who speak real Greek you should go to Batumi” (my emphasis) – friends in Tbilisi told me. It also illustrates how the re-education of these diasporas in the past affected their hierarchization in the present. The different linguistic or cultural traditions did not disappear, but they were politicized living traces in today’s identity politics. For example, the comparison between the Greek and Turkish-speaking Greek communities of Georgia is a case that should be taken into account.

15 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 [1974].

16 In ancient Greek, the term was used in rhetoric to refer to a stock theme or expression that could (...)

17 Lefebvre, pp. 22-23.

18 Arjun Appadurai, “The production of locality”, in R. Fardon [ed.], Counterworks: Migration the div (...)

16 According to Lefebvre, our perception of space reflects the dialectics between practice, conception and imagination. 15 The Greek center was constructed through western imagination, contradictory ideas and traditions about Greekness and state policies, for example among the Pontic communities and metropolitan Greece. Following once more Lefebvre, we must also consider how social spaces generate different “topoi” 16 (in plural). 17 In other words, how space is transformed in a more personalized, historicized and localized experience and how people emplace themselves in it. As a consequence, we should consider how the community in Batumi formed their own social space and identity not only in relation, but also, against or through the Greek, national history. 18

19 Hayden White, “The Future of Utopia in History”, in Historein. A Review of the Past and Other Stor (...)

20 White, p. 11.

17 This im-placement is tied to history according to White. 19 He considers history as “a congeries of ‘places’ (topoi)”, 20 different placements in time and place, a process which becomes distinct and meaningful by systems of control, or, as Foucault would say, regimes of power and knowledge. In the dominant paradigm of Modernity, time is depicted as linear and progressive, in the same way that space is imagined as homogenous and continuous. Nevertheless, a closer look at the Greek imagination of the pre-revolutionary period seems to underline the role of the idealized past and the role of ancient Greece stressed within the Enlightenment project. At the same time, the hellenization project focused on the concentration of these fragmented and decentred diasporic communities around the Athenian center.

21 Foucault was interested in the institutionalized “sites” of power, categorized “counter-sites” into (...)
22 Edward W. Soja, “Heterotopologies: A Remembrance of Other Spaces in the Citadel-L.A.” in Strategie (...)

23 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope , Edinburgh: University Press of Edinburgh, 2000.

24 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” in Diacritics , Spring: 1, 1986, pp. 22-28.

18 In this framework, these communities exist in reality, but they are different for this emerging center of power. They are “counter-sites” 21 real spaces that nevertheless, contest all other spaces, which lack the illusion of utopias and they can be reached only “through a different way of seeing, a different interpretive analytics”. 22 These different lenses are not unrelated to issues of power. 23 However in his discussion of the distinction between these two topoi, Foucault (1986) uses reality in order to compare utopias and heterotopias. 24 Although this division, real/unreal, in the light of postmodernism could be considered as invalid, I think that Foucault points to a different time framework. Utopias are directed towards the future, whereas heterotopias are towards the present. This interpretation could help our discussion of how both (future/present) are connected and transformed into horizons of interpretations of memories and desires.

25 See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope Vol. 3 , Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986, for a discussion (...)

19 These interpretations, I think, are central in the study of diasporas, because they fuse space and time blending together desire, latency and expectation, necessary ingredients of the so-called nostalgia of the diasporas. 25 In this framework, diasporas could emerge, at certain times, as categories of alternative being, living and feeling challenging the dominant one. This is important, because, as I have shown, the creation of the Greek nation-state fixed a legitimate center of Hellenism, based on imaginations of the past, which cultivate desires for the future regarding these other Greek places, such as the diasporic communities, as satellites of the center. These diasporic communities started to be considered as same but different, less authentic than the Greek center, but still Greek, and thus, they needed to be re-educated. Greece, that was conceived as European heterotopias, started to produce its own.

26 Partly this vision supported the ideology of expansion of Greece beyond its borders in early 20th (...)

20 During this processes “nation-state” became the almost metaphysical destination of diaspora, its destiny and an evangelized utopia. 26 The focus in the production of different conceptualization of time and space forces us to re-conceptualize the center as such, as well as its mechanisms to construct otherness. This examination also gives us the opportunity to consider how these other places, such as the aforementioned diasporic communities, might have alternative perceptions of Greekness that emerge from their particular historical experience, influenced by the central utopian project of the 20 th century: the formation of the Soviet Union. In the following part, I will examine how some of these perceptions that Ania mentioned above rise as a result of the Soviet engineering.

Alternative Realities

21 In the previous part, I discussed the impact of the creation of the Greek nation-state on the formation of a Greek diaspora. I argued that the engagements of various Greek-speaking communities in the project of ethnogenesis produced a Greek diasporic consciousness. At the same time, I pointed out that the formation of the Greek state transformed these diasporic communities to topoi of dispersion from the “original” center. Experiencing Otherness as well as different historical conditions contributed to the alternative ways that Ania and their people conceive themselves. In this part, I will illustrate how the wider socio-economic relations between West/East generated, and how other ideas and imageries regarding Nation/Diasporas among the Greeks in Batumi generate.

27 Following Marx’s ideas about nations, Lenin considered them in his early writings, as a pathogen of (...)
28 Fredric Jameson, “Introduction/Prospectus: To reconsider the relationship of Marxism and Utopian T (...)

22 Ania referred to symbiosis and amalgamation. She spoke of difference as resulting from the “special character” of her region. But what is this special character? The Greeks who lived in Georgia in the 1920s were far from a homogenous group, as I have discussed. After the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that lasted until 1921, the reactions of the peoples of the former Russian Empire obliged Lenin to reconsider his stance on the idea of nations 27 . According to Jameson, Marxism offered two important aspects to the utopian thought of the 19 th century: presentism (the future is embedded in the present, firstly, in economic terms, for example industrialization as a way to accelerate the birth of a working class), and the social agent of change (the proletariat). 28 The history of the Soviet Union, especially in the first years was a struggle between the utopian ideas and the pragmatics of the political landscape of the country.

29 Eleni Sideri, “Cosmopolitanism in the Black Sea: from imperial Russia to the Stalinist deportation (...)

23 Lenin reconsidered his social engineering by stressing the instrumentality of nations as a form of creating solidarity, especially when the expression of these national feelings was oppressed by the Tsarist regime. In this framework, he shaped his project of national awareness and development launched in the 1920s in the Soviet Republics, as part of ‘ korenizatsiya ’ (rooting) in order to create a new social and political order. In this context, Greek language school started to function and a new generation of Greek language teachers was trained in Georgia. Respect to national sensitivities was eliminated after 1929 with the gradual enforcement of the Stalinist planning for the increase of the industrial production at the expense of the rural structures of the country. The political terror, that accompanied this program, was sealed for the Greeks of Western Georgia (Batumi and Sukhumi) with their deportations in 1949. 29

30 The Marxist tradition considers bourgeois ideology as a form of false consciousness, whereas social (...)
31 Fredric Jameson, I arkheologies tou mellontos. I epithymia pou legete outopia [Archaeologies of th (...)
32 Wallenstein, quoted from Ruth Levitas, “For Utopia: The (limits of the) utopian function in late c (...)
33 Susan Buck-Morris, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The passage of mass Utopia in East and West , Cambri (...)

24 Stalinism increased the distance between the utopia and its daily bureaucratization and enforcement. Within this context, the utopian world that was evangelized in the time of the Revolution gradually became part of the Party’s rhetoric and an ideological idiom. 30 The economic and political centralization turned the initial vision of change into a nightmare, a dystopia, a term that emerged in 1950, according to Jameson 31 due to the totalitarianism of this period that strengthened the belief in the West that utopias are “breeders of illusions and therefore, inevitable, of disillusions”. 32 The post-war years are formative for the emergence of what would soon be called the other side of the Iron Gate. This period contributes to the construction of the total Other/Enemy, as Buck-Morris argued, which had an enormous impact on the coherence of the imaginary and was based, “on a politically imaginary of mutually exclusive, potentially hostile nation-states”. 33

25 Although Stalinism was traumatic for the Greek communities of western Georgia (they were deported in 1949), Ania seems to “forget” this part of her past, maybe as a way to underline her present needs and losses, as I will discuss. She chooses to shift her narrative to the idealized Soviet rhetoric regarding the co-existence of nationalities. As Khrushchev (1953-64) believed, the peoples living in the Soviet Union were destined to come closer dialectically through the blooming of their ethnic cultures until their final merging into the supranational category of the “Soviet People”. This natural, almost metaphysical merging would occur independently of the nationalities’ own will. Khrushchev failed to explain exactly what the utopian category of the Soviet People meant or to lay down a timetable for its establishment: his announcement thus expressed wishful thinking rather than a pragmatic political agenda. The various ethnic cultures did in fact flourish, but this did not lead to their gradual rapprochement. On the contrary, it strengthened the sense of living separately under an umbrella system intended to provide basic economic and social services to all, a general line that was followed with variations in rhetoric, by his successors. In this context, for Greeks like Ania, Greekness is detached from the territoriality of the Greek nation-state and becomes a political component of their “Sovietness”.

34 Eleni Sideri, “In quest of Eastern Europe: troubling encounters in the post-Cold War field” in Ant (...)

26 In the meanwhile, post-war Europe was about to produce another duality between Eastern/Western Europe. The Soviet Union as political space after World War II has constituted a social and political Other that acted as an important oppositional pole to ‘the West’. This role as the West’s Other became a key factor in the shaping of assumptions about ourselves and the others since the beginning of the Cold War. However, with the emergence of the latter in the case we are discussing, Nation and Diaspora are being separated in opposing ideological camps. For the official Greek state, and many Greeks without ties with these communities, the history Soviet Greeks, as they were known, was silenced for many years, until the late 1970s. During this period, diaspora seems to fall into disuse as social and political category of belonging. Many of the stereotypes regarding social regress that the Greeks from Georgia had to confront when they migrated to Greece since the 1990s, had their origin in that political division. 34

35 Ioanna Laliotou, “Timely Utopias: Notes on Utopian Thinking in the Twentieth Century”in Historein , (...)

27 The different experiences of this period contribute to the development of an alternative idea for the role diasporas have today. For Laliotou, the emergence of different potentialities of reality is embedded in the discussion of utopias whose return today has not been irrelevant to the political changes of the 1990s. 35 During this period, “diaspora” is been re-coined as a prominent analytical category. In this period, diaspora is seen as an important potential expression of collective identity constructed through different understandings and readings of the Nation and its history. Nevertheless, the concept of diaspora emerging in Ania’s narrative could be developed into a new vision regarding what the diaspora should be as a category of socio-political belonging.

36 See: Renee Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe. The Social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Pir (...)

28 Ania’s last statement expresses these differences about who should belong to the Greek diaspora. Ania used the hyphenated term “Greek-Georgian” to express her identity and to distinguish herself from me, trying to underline the special nature of her identity in comparison to mine. This was the only time I heard someone refer to such a designation in Georgia. Ania’s visit to Greece must have influenced her terminology. Anthropological works examining various aspects of the lives of the refugees who left Asia Minor and Pontos in 1922 and moved to Greece reveal their gradual integration into the present and past of the Greek nation-state through the creation of hyphenated identities. 36 However, Ania seems to understand this hyphenation in a different way.

29 Within these umbrella designations referring to broad areas of origin, where the refugees had lived the hyphenation does not refer to the linguistic form in Greek, but to the social value of these identities, which could be established only in relation to the dominant Greek identity. Greekness acted as the legitimate framework within which local cultures were expressed. These local identities representedthe cultural diversity and richness of Greekness, but raised no claims to political rights beyond this formal category. In this sense, political belonging to the Greek imagined community meant inclusion through subordination to a homogenous Greek identity that claimed to consist of the best of the subordinate local cultures.

30 Since the 1990s, globalization has questioned the meaning of “nation-state” and has been calling out for new, post-national forms of membership. In this framework, reimagining the past in the light of present conditions (migration from the former Soviet Union to Greece) and the future (repositioning of Greece in world politics) has become extremely important. For example, the political changes forced the Greek state to find new ways to approach old and new diasporas. The emerging vision of this global Hellenism was expressed institutionally with the creation of the Council of Greeks Abroad (SAE) in 1995. SAE is a non-governmental organization, whose mission statement emphasises:

The re-unification of the Hellenistic world and promotion of Hellenism in order to bolster lobbying power;

Economic, social and political strengthening of the Greeks abroad, especially the more vulnerable ones;

37 From the SAE official website: http://www.sae.gr/?id=12382&tag=ΣΑΕ%20Όραμα%20&%20Στόχοι.

Motivating all Greeks abroad to contribute to and participate in the SAE. 37

38 The Greek Nationality Law pays special attention to these factors.

31 Furthermore, in the revision of the Greek Constitution in 1999, article 108 clearly states: ‘The State provides for the maintenance of Hellenism Abroad and the preservation of its ties to the motherland’. It is obvious from its structure and mission statement that SAE is greatly concerned with the political agendas of the Greek state. Yet this global Hellenism is defined through the old vocabulary of the nation (common language, history, religion, culture). 38 In other words, it is global, but still to great extent centred.

39 William Safran, “Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return” in Diaspora , 1(1), 1 (...)

32 Once more, diaspora is considered as a subdivision of the Hellenic culture produced and defined by the national center, although this relation is seen through a transnational –but not completely decentred- organization. However this view of diasporas does not seem to remain unchallenged, as Ania’s interpretation of diaspora illustrates. Her hyphenation with the term Greek-Georgians encourages equality in her membership into two or more heritages and historical backgrounds. These contradictory considerations of the role of diaspora allude to different experiences of the past, different present needs and different aspirations for the future. Sargent suggests that the construction of national identity - and will add that of diasporic identity as well - is not unrelated to utopias of any form (heterotopias, dystopias or eutopias). 39 The study of how these specific forms are imagined and in what ways they relate to the idea of nation/diaspora might be rewarding in opening new paths to the discussion of new forms of political belonging.

The Definition as a New Quest

33 In this paper, I tried to examine the possibility of a valid definition of the term diaspora. I started with the discussion of two main approaches (Safran’s and Clifford’s) pointing out that, although both of them seem contradictory, they, nevertheless, lead to the same impasse. Then, I turned to my ethnography in Georgia (Batumi). I have shown that the polarization and politicization of Nation/Diaspora was a product of the European modernity. Then, I examined the different experiences and ideals of political membership between Greece and the Greek diasporic communities in Soviet Georgia. Finally, I drew my attention to the re-emergence of diasporas in the 1990s and the different desires from the Greek state and the Greek diasporas.

34 I argued that concentrating on the difficulty of inventing a definition regarding diaspora forces us to examine the historical context within which diaspora rises as a conceptual framework, but also how the latter is understood within and against human perceptions of time and space. Drawing from that point, I discussed the questions of topoi and I turned my attention to the conditions that generate various forms of utopias. By examining the historical factors that contributed to the creation of a Greek diaspora, I pointed to the imageries and practices that formed the context of its rise: the Enlightenment ideas, the political and economic exigencies of modernity that cultivated the European nationalisms, national state-building. However, diaspora history is not constructed only in connection, but also, in opposition to the national one. Thus, the examination of the diaspora in Batumi has shown the way that different socio-political experiences could lead to other demands and alternative visions of both past and future.

40 Difficulties in obtaining visas and the often traumatic experiences from migrations increased the i (...)
41 Antonis Liakos, "Utopian and thistorical thinking: interplays and transferences", p.47, in Histore (...)

35 Both these dimensions are encountered in the feeling of nostalgia that seeks to map new life trajectories. Ania by “forgetting” deportations focused in her narrative on the Soviet ideal of full and equal participation to civil rights. Although this remained a dream for many of the Soviet citizens, the ideal is alive for people like Ania who feel that they are deprived today from what they consider their rights. 40 In this way, Ania negotiated her community’s experiences and memories in the light of today’s problems and losses. This negotiation might generate nostalgia, but not in Safran’s sense (pain for the loss of the homeland). Instead, as Liakos puts it, nostalgia is the means to envisage “the future in a different way from what has been realized, and re-enacting the possibilities of the past in juxtaposition to the present”. 41 This re-enactment involves strategies of remembering or forgetting, claiming authenticity and superiority, disenchanting the anti-essentialism of post-modern diasporas found in Clifford’s definition.

42 Jameson, I arkheologies tou mellontos , p.20.

43 See Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments. Essays in Postmodern Morality , Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, (...)
44 Peter G. Stillman, “’Nothing is, but what is not': Utopias as Practical Political Philosophy”, p. (...)

36 Jameson argued that unsuccessful utopias might be the more effective since they leave behind a vacuum that could be satiated with desires and daydreams. 42 The fall of the Soviet Union was characterised as the end of History, which was translated as triumph of capitalism. However, hopes were soon disillusioned by the discontents of globalization. 43 In this context, the re-emergence of utopias not as systematic projects, but more as “critical impulses” or comment on the social life becomes prominent. 44 The question is how the latter could be translated into such ways both in terms of content as well as of form in order to become meaningful. In this framework, diasporas have re-emerged in socio-political and academic vocabulary trying to map new political contingencies with nation, but also move beyond, embracing the transnational prerequisites of the economic landscape. However, a fixed definition of diaspora or one resulting only in relation to the nation is hardly satisfactory. In today’s context, where the discussion for equality and more open forms of political membership is more acute than ever, diaspora re-emerges as an identity with use-value, but contradictory understandings for Ania and her people, as well as the Greek foreign policy. However, as Edwards postulated, the examination of the meaning of diaspora becomes meaningful only “though and across difference”. In this way, the embedded contradictions and ambiguities could be revealing wider meanings, potentialities and expectations expressed through the concept in different periods, and this may help us comprehend the dialectics of desire and power.

1 The concept became central in the work of many postmodern thinkers because of its potential emancipatory force against the social-political structures of capitalism and inspired the agenda of micro-politics, see Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus , Minneapolis, University of Minessota Press, 1983 and Jean-François Lyotard, The P ostmodern C ondition , Minneapolis, University of Minessota Press, 1984. However, the abstractness and the appraisal of the deterritorialized individual, which are embedded in these approaches, have rather weakened this project from its social and political force.

2 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century , Massachussets, Harvard University Press, 1997. William Safran, “Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return” in Diaspora , 1 (1), 1997, pp. 83-99. Here, I present only two works in order to sketch how different approaches tried to define the human experience labeled as diaspora because of their influence and almost exemplary status. There are, of course, many other that criticize the aforementioned models and tried to move beyond.

4 Liisa H. Malkki, “National Geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugee” in Cultural Anthropology, 7 (1), 1992, pp. 24-44.

6 See Benedict Anderson, “The New World Disorder”, in J. Vincent, The Anthropology of Politics. A Reader in Ethnography, Theory and Critique , Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 261-270.

7 Brent Hayes Edwards, “The uses of Diaspora”, Social Text, 19: 1, 2001, pp. 45-74, and Brent Hayes Edwards, The P ractice of Diaspora: Literature, Transition and the Rise of Black Internationalism , Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 13.

8 Achara comprises the following ethnic groups 93,4 % Georgians, 2.3 Armenians, 0,6 Greeks, 0,4 Abkhazians, 0,2 Ukrainians, 0,2 others (Wikipedia, 2002) . See also T. Sakhokia, Mogzaurobani. Guria, Achara, Samur Zaqano, Apkhazeti [Travel writings. Guria, Achara, Samur Zaqano, Aphazi],Batumi: Sabch’ot‘a Ach’ara, 1998.

9 Achara had been an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Soviet Georgia since 1921 (ASSR). After Georgia’s independence, it kept its autonomy.

10 Michel Bruneau, “Ē diaspora tou Pontiakou Ellēnismou ke I Ellēnes tēs prōēn ESSR, ē edafikē skhesē” [The diaspora of the Pontic Hellenism and the Greeks of the former USSR, the territorial realtion] in Michel Bruneau [ed.], I diaspora tou Pontiakou Ellinismou , Thessaloniki: Herodotos, 2001.

11 Artemis Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism. Mapping to Hellenism, Ithaca/ London: Cornell University Press, 1995.

13 In the Greek historiography, the Greek diaspora is divided into three periods: 1. Late 14th century-19th century, featuring migration of the Greek population from the Byzantine center – Constantinople – to the West, 2. 1830s (foundation of the Greek state) to World War II, featuring migration from Greece to southern Russia, the Caucasus and North and South America and 3. Mid-1940s to 1970s, featuring migration from Greece to the Americas, Australia and Western Europe (West Germany). The temporal and geographical span shows the complexity and diversity of the communities labelled and homogenised as Greek Diaspora. See Iannis K. Hassiotis, Episkopisē tēs istorias tēs neoellēnikēs diasporas [Review of the history of the modern Greek diaspora] , Athens: Vanias, 1993; and Michel Bruneau, “Ē diaspora tou Pontiakou Ellēnismou ke I Ellēnes tēs prōēn ESSR, ē edafikē skhesē” [The diaspora of the Pontic Hellenism and the Greeks of the former USSR, the territorial realtion] in Michel Bruneau [ed.], I diaspora tou Pontiakou Ellinismou , Thessaloniki: Herodotos, 2001.

14 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

16 In ancient Greek, the term was used in rhetoric to refer to a stock theme or expression that could impress the audience. In Modern Greek it means “place”. This double meaning illustrates Lefebvre’s point that space is “used” and “written”.

18 Arjun Appadurai, “The production of locality”, in R. Fardon [ed.], Counterworks: Migration the diversity of Knoweledge, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 204-225.

19 Hayden White, “The Future of Utopia in History”, in Historein. A Review of the Past and Other Stories , vol. 7, 2007, pp. 11-20.

21 Foucault was interested in the institutionalized “sites” of power, categorized “counter-sites” into six major functional categories that ultimately risk being overly general and restrictive. However, as Harvey underlines, Foucault’s attempt to turn our attention to the heterogeneity of perceptions of discourse remained uncompleted since the French philosopher does not proceed to the construction of an alternative reading that could result to various forms of emancipation and resistance avoiding essentialism.

22 Edward W. Soja, “Heterotopologies: A Remembrance of Other Spaces in the Citadel-L.A.” in Strategies 3, 1990, pp. 6-39, p. 8.

25 See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope Vol. 3 , Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986, for a discussion of various cultural forms permeated with hope of organizing life in the West.

26 Partly this vision supported the ideology of expansion of Greece beyond its borders in early 20th century.

27 Following Marx’s ideas about nations, Lenin considered them in his early writings, as a pathogen of the bourgeois societies used to control the means of production and obstruct the working class alliances. In 1913, Stalin in his “Marxism and the National Question” ( Works, Vol. 4, 1917-1920 , Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953, pp.300-382), expressed the official Bolshevik line on the issue arguing that the nation was a historical formation whose existence should not be denied but which was far less important than class.

28 Fredric Jameson, “Introduction/Prospectus: To reconsider the relationship of Marxism and Utopian Thought”, pp. 362-363, in Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks, The Jameson Reader , Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 361-368.

29 Eleni Sideri, “Cosmopolitanism in the Black Sea: from imperial Russia to the Stalinist deportations and the post-Soviet diasporas”, Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA)-UK, 6, 2006, pp. 10-14.

30 The Marxist tradition considers bourgeois ideology as a form of false consciousness, whereas socialist ideology might hide emancipatory and revolutionary possibilities. Bloch, however, believes that there are deceptive and emancipatory qualities in both ideologies and utopias (Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope Vol. 3 ).

31 Fredric Jameson, I arkheologies tou mellontos. I epithymia pou legete outopia [Archaeologies of the future. The desire called utopia and other science fictions.], Vol. 1 , Athens: Topos, 2008.

32 Wallenstein, quoted from Ruth Levitas, “For Utopia: The (limits of the) utopian function in late capitalism society” in B. Goodwirn [ed.], The Philosophy of Utopia , London: Franc Cass, 2001, pp. 21-44

33 Susan Buck-Morris, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The passage of mass Utopia in East and West , Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000, p. 13.

34 Eleni Sideri, “In quest of Eastern Europe: troubling encounters in the post-Cold War field” in Anthropology Matters , 8:1, 2006. Available online at: http://www.anthropologymatters.com/journal/2006-1/ sideri_2006_inuest.pdf.

35 Ioanna Laliotou, “Timely Utopias: Notes on Utopian Thinking in the Twentieth Century”in Historein , 7, 2007, pp. 58-71.

36 See: Renee Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe. The Social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Pireus , New York/Oxford: Bergham Books, 1989; Patricia Fann, “The Pontic Myth of Homeland: Cultural Expressions of Nationalism and Ethnicism in Pontos and Greece 1870-1990”, Journal of Refugee Studies , 1991, Vol. 4(4), pp. 340-357; Maria Vergeti, Apo ton Ponto stēn Ellada. Diadikasies diamorfōssēs mias ethnotopikis taftotētas [From Pontos to Greece. Processes of formation of an ethno-regional identity] , Thessaloniki: Afi Kyriakidi, 1994; Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of wheat, hills of blood: Passage to nationhood in Greek-Macedonia 1870-1900 , Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000.

39 William Safran, “Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return” in Diaspora , 1(1), 1991 pp. 83-99.

40 Difficulties in obtaining visas and the often traumatic experiences from migrations increased the intensity of this feeling.

41 Antonis Liakos, "Utopian and thistorical thinking: interplays and transferences", p.47, in Historein , 7, 2007, pp. 20-58.

43 See Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments. Essays in Postmodern Morality , Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995, and Postmodernity and its Discontents , New York: New York University Press, 1997.

44 Peter G. Stillman, “’Nothing is, but what is not': Utopias as Practical Political Philosophy”, p. 19, in B. Goodwin [ed.], The Philosophy of Utopia , London: Frank Cass, pp. 9-25.

Bibliographical reference

Eleni Sideri , “The Diaspora of the Term Diaspora: A Working-Paper of a Definition” , Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 , 4 | 2008, 32-47.

Electronic reference

Eleni Sideri , “The Diaspora of the Term Diaspora: A Working-Paper of a Definition” , Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [Online], 4 | 2008, Online since 14 October 2009 , connection on 27 September 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/247; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/transtexts.247

About the author

Eleni sideri.

Associate Professor, School of Oriental and African Studies (London)

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Diaspora, Memory, and Identity: A Search for Home on JSTOR
XML. AFTERWORD: Research Ethics: Philosophy's Role in Interdisciplinary Research. Download. XML. Contributors. Download. XML. Diaspora, Memory, and Identityis an exciting and innovative collection of essays that examines the nuanced development of theories of Diaspora, subjectivity, do...
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alongside the view that diaspora involves a conception of identity that avoids the essentialism of much of the discussion on ethnic and cultural identities (Hall 1990). This is because diaspora refocuses attention on transnational and dynamic processes, relating to ethnic commonalities, which can recognise difference and diversity.
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Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora. Stuart Hall. Duke University Press, Dec 6, 2018 - Social Science - 352 pages. From his arrival in Britain in the 1950s and involvement in the New Left, to founding the field of cultural studies and examining race and identity in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuart Hall has been central to shaping ...
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Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora draws from Hall's later essays, in which he investigated questions of colonialism, empire, and race. It opens with "Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity," which frames the volume and finds Hall rethinking received notions of racial essentialism.
Diaspora, memory and identity : a search for home
Diaspora, Memory, and Identity is an exciting and innovative collection of essays that examines the nuanced development of theories of Diaspora, subjectivity, double-consciousness, gender and class experiences, and the nature of home. (source: Nielsen Book Data) Subjects.
Diaspora, Memory, and Identity
Diaspora, Memory, and Identity is an exciting and innovative collection of essays that examines the nuanced development of theories of Diaspora, subjectivity, double-consciousness, gender and class experiences, and the nature of home.
Diasporas
Safran's essay in the first issue of Diaspora, "Diasporas in Modem Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return" (1991), seems, at times, to be engaged in such ... and a collective identity importantly defined by this re-lationship. "In terms of that definition," Safran writes, "we may legitimately speak of the Armenian, Maghrebi, Turkish ...
Identity, Affect, and Cultural Citizenship in Diasporic Context
Offering a postcolonial intervention into this interdisciplinary field, the essay analyses 'digital diaspora' as a relational term that operates on three levels - Internet-specific, network ...
(PDF) The Concept of Home in Diaspora
The concept of home in diaspora studies is a question of identity and belonging. The enthusiasm of migrating out of homeland, the resolve to maintain identities and the intention to extend solidarity with the local and the transnational encompass the diasporic experience. While the diasporic communities share a sentimental affection with the ...
Diaspora
Popular essay that examines the concept of diaspora as a "traveling" term that defies the any exclusivist paradigms used to denote the complexities of transnational identity formations. It traces and reviews the currency of diaspora theory and discourse through the popular invocations of diaspora in black British and anti-Zionist Jewish ...
PDF STUART HALL "CULTURAL IDENTITY AND DIASPORA"
identity which a Caribbean or black diaspora must discover, excavate, bring to light and express. . . . (393) Hall acknowledges that the "rediscovery of this identity is often the object of what Frantz Fanon once called a 'passionate research'" (393) and that such a "conception of cultural identity played a crucial role in all post-
(PDF) Cultural identity and diaspora
Cultural identity and diaspora. January 2013; Authors: Cristina-Georgiana Voicu. Download full-text PDF Read full-text. ... This essay will examine Homi Bhabha's concept of mimicry, through the ...
PDF The Notions of Home and Identity in Diaspora Literature: A ...
Home is what gives the individual the sense of belonging, belonging to a certain community or group, a certain race and culture. The experience of migrant and diaspora people goes beyond this perception of home. Home is not only the geographically bounded territory. Rather, it does exist in the minds of the migrants and diaspora communities.
PDF Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Cultural Identity and Diaspora was born into and spent my childhood and adolescence in a lower-middle-class family in Jamaica. I have lived all my adult life in England, in the shadow of the black diaspora - 'in the belly of the beast'. I write against the background of a lifetime's work in cultural studies.
Home and Away: The Dialectics of Diasporic Identity
The question of identity and home is central to diaspora. As diaspora is characterised with a history of dislocation, displacement and relocation, there always emerges a question of belongingness and longing for home. ... The present paper will try to problematise the diasporic identity in the light of two seminal essays- Salman Rushdie's ...
Cultural Identity and Diaspora [1990]
Stuart Hall (1932-2014) was one of the most prominent and influential scholars and public intellectuals of his generation. Hall taught at the University of Birmingham and the Open University, was the founding editor of New Left Review, and was the author of Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands, and other books also published by Duke ...
Digital Diasporas: Postcoloniality, Media and Affect
Abstract. This essay revisits the notion of diaspora in connection with recent advancements in communication technologies, which have led to the formation of 'digital diasporas'. The focus is on digital migrants as 'connected users', and therefore as participants in social media platforms. Though there is no consensus on what digital ...
Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora on JSTOR
The West and the Rest:: Discourse and Power [1992] Download. XML. The Formation of a Diasporic Intellectual:: An Interview with Stuart Hall by Kuan-Hsing Chen [1996] Download. XML. Thinking the Diaspora:: Home-Thoughts from Abroad [1999] Download. XML.
[PDF] Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Cultural Identity and Diaspora. Undoing Place? A new cinema of the Caribbean is emerging, joining the company of the other `Third Cinemas'. It is related to, but different from, the vibrant film and other forms of visual representation of the Afro-Caribbean (and Asian) `blacks' of the diasporas of the West the new post-colonial subjects.
The Diaspora of the Term Diaspora: A Working-Paper of a Definition
The quest for a definition of diaspora seems an impossible task because of the plurality of historical experiences, trajectories and agendas. One of the first approaches into this matter (Safran's typology 1991) tried to build a definition based on the idea of trauma, exile and nostalgia. However, it became evident that producing a definition based on the memories of one diasporic community ...