The Underbelly of Diaspora Criticism

Abstract

Diaspora Criticism is concerned with the causes and consequences of human mobility brought about by an historic transformation in the economic and political spheres in the time of modernity and holds up to scrutiny cultural, communicative, affective and aesthetic practices as evidence of this changed logic. Of the several terms associated with diaspora criticism, the key ones are transnationalism, globalization and modernity. Diasporists tend to draw a distinction between pre-modern or classical diasporas and large-scale dispersal of significant ethnic clusters witnessed in the time of late modernity. In a landmark essay, entitled 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', Arjun Appadurai seeks to build a large-scale picture, almost as ambitious in scope as a world systems diagram, to explain the dynamics of globalisation. Appadurai's segments are shapes-in-motion across a planetary field. Keywords: Arjun Appadurai; diaspora criticism; transnationalism