On Diaspora

The following is in response to Jonathan’s post at Head Heeb. It is a selection from a piece I’m working on about South Asian diaspora communities and hybrid art.

Diaspora, as an analytic term, is one that has multiple
meanings,^[1] and that needs some
clarification before proceeding with its use. One convenient way
to begin thinking about diaspora is to make a distinction
between physical diasporas and the idea of diaspora as
metaphor.^[2] Physical
diasporas^[3] can be further
divided into types, such as classical, victims, labor, trade,
and imperial.^[4] The key type of
diaspora for South Asians is the labor diaspora, which is
defined as the movement of members of an ethnic group who move
for economic reasons and maintain a sense of ethnic identity in
the host society.^[5] Robert
Cohen, a typologist of diasporas, also discusses the idea of
cultural diaspora, which is akin to the idea of diaspora as
metaphor, and talks about how cultural diasporas can exist
independently of physical diasporas. According to André Levy and
Alex Weingrod, "diaspora as metaphor" is "a way to emphasize the
powerful cultural and other relationships between minorities
living in several different countries (for example, between
Blacks in England and African-Americans in the United States) …
Diaspora in this sense means rejecting the path of assimilation
into the dominant majority," ^[6]
and a reason for such rejection is being constructed as a
racialized other.

For our purposes then, there was a labor diaspora that
resulted in the migration of South Asia to various places around
the world. The children of these diasporics are now part of a
cultural diaspora, who are not interested in being associated
with a homeland, but with a home.^[7] Several sociologists have
questioned whether the term diaspora can be applied to
second-generation South Asians, preferring the term
transnational community instead.^[8] However, I believe such a
critique relies only on the idea of a physical diaspora, and
that the idea of a cultural diaspora encompasses the ideas of
transnational communities. On the other side of the argument are
those who argue that the idea of diaspora is about creating
cultural isolation,^[9] but I
believe misses the sociologic concerns of minority communities.
The "diasporic community"^[10]
is not about the minority remaining the minority, but about
fighting marginalization and redefining the mainstream.^[11] This concept of the South
Asian cultural diaspora that I suggest mirrors closely Paul
Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic:^[12] a cultural system that is not
specific to a nation, but that is localized to national
concerns.

Bibliography

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting
Identities. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction,
Global Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1997.

Friedman, Jonathan.
"Diasporization, Globalization, and Cosmopolitan
Discourse." In Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and
Other Places, edited by André Levy and Alex Weingrod.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Gilroy, Paul. The
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1993.

Levy, André, and
Alex Weingrod. "On Homelands and Diasporas: An
Introduction." In Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands
and Other Places, edited by André
Levy and Alex Weingrod. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 2005.

Purkayastha,
Bandana. Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian
Americans Traverse a Transnational World. New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Raj, Dhooleka
Sarhadi. Where Are You From?: Middle-Class Migrants in the
Modern World. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003.

^[1]           André Levy and Alex Weingrod, "On
Homelands and Diasporas: An Introduction," in Homelands
and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places,
ed. André Levy and Alex Weingrod (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2005).

^[2]                Ibid.,
7.

^[3]                For
definitions of this type of diaspora, see Robin Cohen, Global
Diasporas: An Introduction,
Global Diasporas (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1997), 23, 26.

^[4]                Ibid.

^[5]                Ibid.,
57.

^[6]                Levy and
Weingrod, "On Homelands and Diasporas: An
Introduction," 17.

^[7]                Avtar
Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting
Identities
(London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 180.

^[8]                Bandana
Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South
Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 172-73,
Dhooleka Sarhadi Raj, Where Are You From?: Middle-Class
Migrants in the Modern World (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003), 168.

^[9]                Jonathan
Friedman, "Diasporization, Globalization, and Cosmopolitan
Discourse," in Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and
Other Places,
ed. André Levy and Alex Weingrod (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2005), 145.

^[10]              Brah,
Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities,
183.

^[11]              Ibid., 210.

^[12]              Paul Gilroy, The
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

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