Digital Archiving of Diasporic Cultural Productions and Transnational Citizenship of Arabs in the West

Abstract

When transnationally constructed art forms, such as the works of diasporic cultural productions of Arabs in the West, are made available in open-source on a digital archive, this supports the transnational flow or exchange of citizenship-enhancing ideas, skill-sets, technologies, tools, capacities, and practices. In this theoretical investigation, we explore imagined outcomes when new audiences can engage with diasporic cultural productions of Arabs. Digital archiving of ethnically diverse cultural productions can expand civility, solidarity, and common ground among people; these latter behaviors are the ideational foundations of agency-based claims of transnational citizenship. Such cultural productions help to reconfigure the questions, opportunities, and nature of political and social agency in ways that empower diaspora communities and expand their abilities to make citizenship claims in multiple societies. This is what the Internet enables despite its tendency towards parochialism in globalized pockets. Moreover, we highlight the possibilities of open-source digital archiving—with a focus on literature, poetry, biographies, and letters—for agency-based claims of citizenship and the many caveats that require further attention and consideration.