Deterritorialized people in hyberspace: Creating and debating Harari identity over the internet

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IntroductionIn 1991, Ethiopians abroad celebrated as revolutionary forces toppled the socialist dictatorship that had ruled their country of origin for nearly two decades. This regime, known as the Dergue,(1) will be remembered by many Ethiopians and foreign observers as a reign of terror during which the government committed gross systematic and wide-scale human rights abuses. Not only did the atrocities committed by the Dergue throughout the 1970s and 80s(2) create massive internal displacement, but hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians scattered worldwide in search of refuge. In a matter of less than two decades, a global diaspora of people from a country that had no previous history of immigration was created.Diaspora, the idea of people who imagine themselves as a nation outside of a homeland (Kearney, 1995: 553), is a phenomenon implying movement--not only dispersal, but often that of an idealized return (cf. Safran 1991: 83-84).(3) Until recently, Ethiopians living outside the country were considered to be living in exile (Catholic, 1998: 1)--an undersirable and involuntary state of homelessness that could only be rectified by return. In the Ethiopian case, the possibility of return became an option in 1991. The majority of those living in exile, however, did not seize upon that opportunity. This has forced the creation of an identity which acknowledges the permanence of the diaspora, and demands the establishment of borders which define a community in global terms.In this paper I explore aspects of this negotiation amongst members of one Ethiopian community. The Harari--a community of Muslim Ethiopians originally from the city of Harar--are a dispersed community, with one third of their population now scattered across the globe. With the creation of a Harari e-mail discussion forum and several web sites devoted to history, language and culture, Hararis are using the Internet as a space within which the widest number of people from the community living abroad can engage in the debate and creation of a new global identity. This is ironically, however, a conversation that excludes both Hararis in Ethiopia, who lack access to this technology, and most elders living abroad because they are not conversant in English, and/or the technological language required to participate. Elders are well aware of what is communicated though, as e-mails are regularly shared, translated and debated within families and community associations in different cities.In the deterritorialized space of hyperspace, where time and space are compressed (cf. Harvey, 1989), and constructions are detached from any local reference (Kearney, 1995: 553), a limited number of Hararis are invoking a new language of nationhood in order to give shape to a now dispersed community. This is an example of how new media can provide a forum for the creation of national identity outside national borders, and how those with access to this technology are the ones most active in that discussion. This exploration of the use of new media offers insight into the ways in which transnational, and more broadly, transtemporal and transspatial processes are involved in redefining community relations and identities amongst dispersed peoples in a postmodern world.Where Glick-Schiller and others have preferred to call such identities transmigrant or transnational (1992; 1995) rather than immigrant, in order to suggest that identities are multiply constituted and lived across borders, these identities may, in fact, be further complicated by the creation of an additional dimension which others have not considered--a virtual reality within which aspects of community and culture are simultaneously being defined.The Myth of ReturnIn many diasporic cases, the idea of repatriation to the homeland is phrased as conditional; dependent upon a change in the circumstances which led to dispersal, and often attached, in the collective imagination, to a political or spiritual event such as the establishment of a separate state (as in the case of Israel), the overthrow of a dictatorship, the secession of war, or, for the more eschatologically oriented, the day of resurrection, or the afterlife. …