Diasporic Consciousness Research Articles

Theorizing Diaspora and Music

This article sketches out a synthesis of issues that have emerged in the study of diaspora and music. The author identifies two broad approaches in the literature: 1) diaspora as social formation and 2) diaspora as metaphor. By “diaspora as social formation” is meant approaches that stress a sociological definition of diaspora and that emphasize the historical facts and material conditions of diasporas, with empirical enquiry focused on the social networks that maintain diasporic communities and the role of music in articulating such networks. In contrast, approaches that evoke “diaspora as metaphor” emphasize the interpretive possibilities that the idea of diaspora enables in regard to the historical and contemporary global flows of music. The article ends with a brief discussion of the metaphor of the rhizome as a way of thinking about the non-hierarchical nature of diasporic networks, and of the way music may articulate the different nodes of these networks while providing a vehicle for the imagination and performance of diasporic consciousness.

English

While there in an exhaustive list of literature produced by diasporic South Asian writers that voices a multitude of concerns for both men and women of this descent, the voice that speaks to the South Asian young adult needs to be highlighted and explored in detail. This is especially crucial as the majority of metropolitan young adult texts are largely Eurocentric in nature. Novels with themes that appeal to a young reader with subject matter consistent with the age, experiences and challenges of the young adult and with a young non-white protagonist are rare. This paper introduces a South Asian Diasporic Metropolitan Young Adult text to investigate how it can interpolate into the consciousness of the Metropolitan diasporic South Asian young reader as well as into the western narrative space. This is done by focusing on the ways in which South Asian elements of place, history, and allegory interpolate into the narrative space of Tanuja Desai Hidier’s young adult novel, Born Confused (2002). The ultimate aim of this paper is to show that South Asian Diasporic Metropolitan Young Adult Literature can play a role in interpolating transnational heritage by creating an awareness of cultural heritage on familiar young adult grounds and decenter Eurocentric narrative discourses. Keywords: transnationalism; interpolation; young adult; South Asian diaspora; Eurocentric; diasporic consciousness.

Mapping the Psychological Landscape of the Two Generations of Indian Diaspora in US through the Works of Jhumpa Lahiri

<p>Every diasporic study or displacement theory inadvertently leads through an analysis and understanding of its governing forces <em>viz</em> socio-economic factors, culture, milieu etc. so as to arrive at any recognizable pattern of the given diasporic consciousness.</p><p>The first generation Indian diasporic sensibilities, governed majorly by the strong undercurrents of culture and traditions, stick to the natal bonds and cultural identity in foreign lands. These culture-preservation efforts are tested and challenged on several fronts externally. Ironically, the biggest threat is posed by internal agents, the second generation, who being culturally hybridized, find themselves torn between two sensibilities. Intrinsically attached to the American mainstream, they take only peripheral interest in reinforcing the ties with their roots.</p><p>The novels of the internationally acclaimed writer of the Indian origin, Jhumpa Lahiri, traverse through the psychological landscape of the first and second generation Indian immigrants in USA mapping significantly the boundaries and distances between the both. This study makes an attempt to look through Lahiri’s works at the paradigm shift between the two generations, the first generation with its ‘living within the walls’ approach and second generation with its unfixed values. The paper also analyzes the set of ‘C’s- conflicts, clashes, complexities and compromises, with a view to present the dialectics or the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis involved in the Indian diasporic reality.</p><p><strong>Key Words- </strong>Acculturation, Deculturation, Hyphenated Identity, Hybridization, Paradox of Otherness, Breaking the Stereotypes<strong> </strong></p>

“Misted and Married Together”?: Diasporic Consciousness and Textual Form in Nineteenth- Century Irish Emigrant Letters from Australia

“Misted and Married Together”?: Diasporic Consciousness and Textual Form in Nineteenth- Century Irish Emigrant Letters from Australia

Living off the Stony Farm: Address and Diasporic Consciousness in “Shamba la Mawe” by Awilo Mike

This article reads diasporic consciousness in the song “Shamba la Mawe” by the Kenyan artiste, Awilo Mike. It takes as its entry point for the reading the fact that Peter, the speaker in the song's lyrics, a Kenyan migrant in Europe, addresses two groups of Kenyans separately and together. The first of the two groups lives in Kenya, the second lives in Europe. The notion that forms of address may reveal information about the person of the addressor is relied on to shepherd the scrutiny of Peter's linguistic reference to his collocutors and the languages he uses in addressing the collocutors into a decoding of his diasporic consciousness. The focus of the analysis is thus on the addressing individual, the speaker, who presents himself as belonging to the two groups that he addresses. Information relating to the career of Awilo Mike is mobilized to conflate the character Peter's utterance and the song “Shamba la Mawe”, which it is part of.

Caribbean Cultural Creolization

This paper tackles the concept of creolization that lies at the very center of discussions of transculturalism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, diversity and hybridization. The concept focuses on the cultural syncretism, as the source for cross-fertilization between different cultures. When creolization takes place, the individuals select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, investing these with meanings, different from those they owned in the original culture and then merge these to create totally new varieties that replace the first forms. The creolized subject is thus a cultural element that stresses new common identity in the place of identification. A diasporic consciousness, by contrast, generally reflects a degree of anxiety with cultural identities in the current location. ‘Homeland’ is recovered through historical memory and social organization, the past providing a continuing pole of attraction and identification. In order to describe the cultural identity, the paper proposes an articulation of the related issues of doubling, hybridity and métissage. Starting from the premise that creolization means more than just mixture, we note that the cultural transmission under situations of displacement and de-territorialization suggests the recognition of powerful ‘others’. We couldn’t but notice that creolization is the force that brings human cultures into relation with one another, a process of relation that neither reduces the other to the same, nor resolves itself in a reified, unchanging form. I posit that, in order to understand the self as it functions in the Caribbean, it becomes important to analyze the way in which the process of creolization took place in the interaction between the Caribbean and Europe.

Thinking in Butler

Thinking in Butler

Black Continental African Identities in Canada: Exploring the Intersections of Identity Formation and Immigrant Transnationalism

Notwithstanding the role of immigrants’ transnationalism and identity formation in shaping their settlement and integration process, the burgeoning literature on Canadian immigration has paid only a perfunctory attention to this area of study. Similarly, despite the enormous diversity among Blacks in Canada, portrayals of Blacks as a homogenous group abound in Canadian public discourse and academic writings. It is with this conjoint lacuna in mind that the present study examines how the identities and diasporic consciousness of Black continental African immigrants in Canada are influenced by their transnational activities, highlighting the challenges involved in the definition of this ethnoracial group, as well as the changes its members have undergone as a result of living in Canada.

Atlantic Gandhi: The Mahatma Overseas by Nalini Natarajan (review)

Nalini Natarajan. Atlantic Gandhi: The Mahatma Overseas. New Delhi: Sage, 2013. Pp. x, 248. Rp 695. In Atlantic Gandhi: The Mahatma Overseas, Nalini Natarjan focuses on diasporic nationalism as it applies to Mahatma Gandhi. Through scrutinizing Gandhi's writing in Autobiography (1927), Hind Swaraj (1909), Satyagraha in South Africa (1928), as well as many of his letters, travel essays, and journalistic writings, Natarjan demonstrates that Gandhi's diasporic experiences in South Africa led him to develop a view of that he later used in his nationalist campaign. She links Gandhi's diasporic experience with the diasporic experiences of different castes and hypothesizes that the nationalist doctrine that Gandhi constructed was in part inspired by the experience of the Indian diaspora in places like South Africa and the Caribbean. Despite its biographical qualities, Atlantic Gandhi is not a biography; it is an excellent interdisciplinary study that investigates how Gandhi understood the different worlds he had seen and experienced and how those experiences helped him form his conception of India and Indianness. In the first chapter, From Kathiavar, Natarajan explores the life of the young Gandhi, a student and traveller for whom, like many others, Indianness as a modern notion of identity did not exist. She points out the importance of Hindu narratives as threads that stitched social groups and communities together in the young Gandhi's mind and, arguably, in the Indian collective consciousness. The second chapter, Sailing the High Seas, traces the roots of Gandhi's diasporic consciousness on board the ships that took him to England and then to South Africa. Natarajan stresses Gandhi's diasporic individualism against the passive discourse of indentured voyages and his courage in crossing the Black Sea in defiance of his community. In the third chapter, Deconstructing the Coolie, Natarajan focuses on the homogenizing construction of the as an abject figure that denotes Chinese, Indian, or any tropical laborers that worked in the Caribbean and on African/American plantations. She argues that they played an integral part in Gandhis ideological formation of the diaspora and his later notion of Indianness. Natarajan succinctly and clearly explains what it meant to be a coolie in 1893 and moves on to explore how Gandhi came to deconstruct the coolie and reject the caste system. I believe this chapters detailed investigation of the coolie would be valuable reading in subaltern studies courses. In Plotting a Diasporic Nation, Natarajan argues that Gandhi's position as a lawyer, a firm servant, framed his first experiences with subaltern diasporic populations. She draws on Benedict Anderson's definition of nationalism to explain how Gandhi's travels across South Africa affected his initial subscription to colonialist race theories. Natarajan believes that travelling across South Africa was a necessity for Gandhi's understanding of the nation. She submits that these journeys taught Gandhi that he needed to travel in India and experience it geographically before he could see Indian nationality as a political reality. In chapter five, Local Cosmopolitan and Modern Anti-Modern, Natarajan reads Hind Swaraj and Satyagraha in South Africa to elaborate the contradictory ideologies that structures Gandhi's activism. …

A narrative exploration of gender performances and gender relations in the Caribbean diaspora

This essay uses a narrative inquiry approach to understand diasporas as gendered phenomena that manifest across multiple borders. Ethnographic exploration of a cricket and social club comprised mainly of older Caribbean men drew attention to the women in their lives. Most of their girlfriends and wives do not play the sport; nevertheless, women are essential to the use of a cricket subculture to remake a Caribbean diasporic consciousness. Women are linked to this predominantly male community through their nurturing, domestic and sexualised gender performances. The performances of masculinities exhibited by male club members also depend on women. This study shows that gender relations are an important aspect of fluid cultural circuits and identity-making in the Caribbean diaspora.

Diasporic Consciousness in the Writings of Rohinton Mistry

Diasporic Consciousness in the Writings of Rohinton Mistry

Indians in Southeast Asia

The Indian presence in Southeast Asia is set deep down in history. There are innumerable accounts of traders, preachers and adventurers who ventured into the high seas and influenced the eastern part of the world, to the extent of ‘Indianizing’ it socially, culturally, religiously and in many other ways. However, it was during the colonial period that government sponsored migrations in the form of labourers, officials and service providers started, which later resulted into permanent settlements. The diasporic consciousness emerged as the settlers became integral part of economic and political lives of the receiving societies, while continuing to be connected with the motherland. This article aims to trace the presence of Indians in Southeast Asia from the early to the present times. The article also makes an attempt to critically analyze the impact of India’s diaspora and the Look East policies on ethnic Indians in Southeast Asia.1

Crusading in Africa: Religion, Race, and Post-9/11 Intervention in Antoine Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun (2003)

African American director Antoine Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun, a 2003 war film made with US Navy cooperation, imagines the intervention of Navy SEALs in an ethnic cleansing being conducted against Christians by Nigerian Muslims. It is at once an exercise in black diasporic consciousness and an expression of American exceptionalism. The director aimed to raise awareness of contemporary African crises, but the picture is also the closest Hollywood combat cinema came in the immediate post-9/11 years to addressing and endorsing the polarizing discourse and militarism of the Bush administration. The film’s use of reductive religious imagery, its weak box office return, and its generally hostile reception overseas expose its failure as a tool of diplomacy and reveal the waning ability of triumphalist Hollywood cinema to define or explain the ‘War on Terror’.

Discourse on African American/Black Identity: engaging the expanded nigrescence theory with a diasporic consciousness.

This manuscript theoretically explores the application of a stretched expanded nigrescence theory (NT-E) by making notions of consciousness explicit, thereby building on the research involving first generation U.S.-born Africans (FGAs). In taking this approach, a theoretical framework of a diasporic consciousness emerged an alternative for exploring the identity development of Africana people. To facilitate this process, a shift from conceiving identity along the lines of race and ethnicity was begun towards a conception that is solely culturally based on eight identified factors.

Culture, community, consciousness: The Caribbean sporting diaspora

This study shows the utility of the concept of diaspora for physical cultural studies, and particularly for thinking through sport in a Canadian setting. The capacity of diaspora theory to specify a matrix of real and imagined cross-border cultural, kinship, and social relationships makes it useful for understanding community (re)generation in sport settings. Relatively little about recreational cricket in the Caribbean and its diaspora has been documented, despite the sport’s power as a symbol of Caribbean unity. My findings indicate that a group of first-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area use a particular form of cultural production, the sport of cricket, to generate and maintain diasporic communities, that is, cross-border interpersonal networks with other Afro-Caribbean people who remain in their nations of origin, and who are dispersed throughout the United States, elsewhere in Canada, and England. Regardless of where they play, cricket matches are “home games” that allow players and spectators to lime (hang out) and (re)generate diasporic consciousness, that is, a sense of themselves as one people through the “authentic” Afro-Caribbean environment they create. The reproduction of Afro-Caribbean culture, community, and consciousness includes conflicts with South Asian and Indo-Caribbean diasporic groups.

Diaspora as Imagined Memories: Director Lü Zhang's Diasporic Consciousness and Its Cinematographic Representation

Diaspora as Imagined Memories: Director Lü Zhang's Diasporic Consciousness and Its Cinematographic Representation

Diasporas without a consciousness: Japanese Americans and the lack of a Nikkei identity

Some scholars have recently suggested that the concept of diaspora should be regarded as a type of identity or consciousness instead of as a transnational ethnic community. While it is undeniable that some dispersed ethnic populations identify as diasporic peoples, older “economic diasporas“ sometimes have lost their transnational social cohesion and do not have a diasporic consciousness. I illustrate this by examining the experiences of Japanese Americans, an important part of the “Japanese diaspora“ of Japanese descendants (Nikkei) sca ered throughout the Americas. Because they have become assimilated in the United States over the generations, they no longer maintain any notable diasporic identi fication with the ethnic homeland or to other Japanese descent ethnic communities in the Americas. Even when they encounter Nikkei from other countries, national cultural diff erences make it difficult for them to develop a diasporic identity as Japanese descendants with a common cultural heritage or historical experiences.

Beyond Discontent:

Beyond Discontent:

Bollywood Cinema’s Global Reach

Using the British Sikh community as its research context, this article explores the influence of the Bollywood film genre on what Vertovic refers to as the “diasporic consciousness” in relation to this community. Bollywood attempts to speak to the diaspora by conveying a new sense of “Indian-ness,” one that is less about citizenship and more about imagined identity and community. The authors investigate what they have termed the “Indian imaginary” and how the values embedded therein impact on the lives of young British Sikhs. The findings discuss three emergent core themes: (1) reaffirming pride in Indian heritage; (2) evoking romance and longing; and (3) reinforcing family values and a sense of kinship within the British Sikh diaspora. The overall contribution of the article is twofold. First, it illustrates how the globalization of Bollywood affects the Indian diaspora at a local level. Second, it shows how Bollywood provides an important space for negotiating and reconciling various tensions between family-based and more individualistic value systems. Ultimately, then, Bollywood offers young British Sikhs a particular, hybridized representation of courtship and marriage that is both romantic and familial, and that serves to reconcile Eastern and Western marital relationship ideals and oppositional cultural discourses.

Beyond discontent: National and diasporic imaginings in contemporary Afro-Brazilian women's writing

In 1990, Carolyn Richardson Durham, an American scholar researching the portrayal of Afro-Brazilian women in literature, traveled to Sao Paulo where she met Miriam Alves, a poet and an activist. At that time, Alves had been compiling an anthology of black women writers that, because of a lack of funds, she was unable to complete. Soon after, they decided to turn this project into a collaborative endeavor and, as a result, published the first anthology of black Brazilian women writers as a bilingual edition in 1994 (all the poems were translated by Richardson Durham). The anthology, entitled Enfim . . . Nos: Escritoras negras brasileiras contemporâneas/Finally . . . Us: Contemporary Black Brazilian Women Writers, presents seventeen women poets, most of whom belong to the Quilhomboje literary movement (Alves decided to distance herself from the movement in 1994). With its monthly publication, Cadernos Negros, Quilhomboje inscribes itself into the tradition of Afro-Brazilian cultural production and political resistance, alongside movements such as the Frente negra brasileira and the Movimento negro unificado.1 Alves felt that the movement was heavily inflected by male voices and that female voices needed additional platforms for expression. The collection deals with a great variety of topics, from representations of the black female body and the monotony of everyday life to the Brazilian myth of racial democracy and the imagining of a transnational African diasporic consciousness. In the introduction to the anthology, Alves expresses the generative idea behind the project: