Diaspora Discourse Research Articles

Santur-Playing Iranian Americans in Northern California

In Northern California, there are Iranian Americans who play santur, originally a representative instrument of Iranian music. The present article focuses on this community, taking the following issues under consideration: · What are the aesthetic conceptions of Iranian santurs and their sounds, held by santur-playing Iranian Americans in Northern California? · What are the social applications of Iranian santurs in Northern California? Regarding methods, participatory study in the field served as the basis for this work. Partners of the study took part in intensive interviews, and also shared their opinions on various music samples. Literary investigation was also applied, clarifying the necessary historical and social backgrounds. My particular interest in santur led me to conduct this work. An aspect of it lies in underlining of diaspora discourse in ethnomusicology. Although there are strong ties between Iranian santur practitioners in Iran and santur-playing Iranian Americans in Northern California, the latter group has its own distinctive social identity and follows its concerns. Their repertoire goes beyond Iranian music as understood in Iran: it includes folk music and takes influences from neighboring minorities, such as Indian Americans. Regarding social applications of santur in Northern California, this study focuses on two main trends: political motivations, and interest in establishing dialogues with neighboring cultures. In both cases, the role of Radif-inspired improvisation is strongly present. In Northern California, the santur is used by various segments of the society. This practice sometimes goes beyond the Iranian American community. As this study focuses on a specific practice of santur away from the instrument’s original homeland, its outcomes can contribute not only to ethnomusicology, but also to areas of diaspora studies, music history, and such creative directions as music performance and improvisation.

Medical tourism of Indian diaspora “back home”

Migration, diaspora, tourism, and health have emerged as prime research interests among social scientists. Interdisciplinary studies are being conducted on the interface of two or more of these domains analysing complex social mobility patterns, such as medical tourism, diaspora tourism, diasporic medical tourism and their like. Among these, medical tourism has emerged as a new form of transnational movement. Within this premise, diasporic dimension of medical travel has amassed substantial importance in contemporary times. These ethnic communities contribute to their homeland in form of investment, philanthropy, and development through healthcare production and consumption. This phenomenon is more prominent in India which is among the top medical tourism destinations and also holds the largest diaspora in the world. Indian government has formulated policies for attracting diasporas back home and also for developing the medical tourism potential of the country. However, there is need to merge the initiatives operational in these two different fields at ground level to obtain maximum benefit. At present, no study gives a nuanced account integrating these two disparate phenomena. Therefore, based on extensive literature review, the paper will seek to integrate the dimensions of medical tourism and diaspora tourism and thus, underline the phenomenon of medical tourism by Indian diaspora at their homeland. The systematic review pointed a large gap in academia within the domain of diasporic medical tourism in Indian context. Research situated around this domain is highly solicited as such studies will contribute substantially to the discourse of diaspora for development.

Troubling transracialism: a transnational perspective

What kinds of feminist projects are made possible by (dis)analogising race and gender and/or transing them? The article asserts that an arbitrary separation is enacted when the transgender-transracial question is pulled apart such that an examination of the conceptual prefix that connects the two, i.e. trans, is discarded for an examination of the elements that allow for their separation – race and gender. Rather than affirm a (dis)analogy between race and gender, the article offers two correctives to the feminist discourse around transracialism / the possibility of reading race as malleable. First, I contest the shock value of transracialism by suggesting that a modality of transracial crossing has existed in the feminist imagination in the form of transnational, diasporic crossings that are separate, though not disparate, from transgender crossings. Second, through a glimpse into the history of racial prerequisite cases in early twentieth-century USA, I suggest the necessity of deploying trans analytics to understand the ways in which race has been made unevenly malleable in highly regulated and contested ways for different populations in different historical contexts. Race operated as fluid, flexible terrain accessed and claimed through discourses of citizenship and diaspora with mixed success. Hence, the article offers diaspora and citizenship, rather than the cultural and biological, as key analytics that enable the mapping of trans formations through patterns of migration and movement.

Food as a Healing Space for a Diasporic Identity in Grace M. Cho’s Tastes Like War: A Memoir

This paper aims to explore a connection between diasporic identity and culinary choice revolving around the life of the principal character Koonja in Grace M. Cho’s Tastes Like War: A Memoir (2021). It investigates how Koonja performs her culinary choices as a tool to heal and nurture her abjected diasporic identity. To do so, drawing upon the theoretical insights from diaspora and culinary identity, the paper employs the method of qualitative content analysis while analyzing and interpreting the memoir. The paper tracks Koonja’s sense of being displaced and dislocated for various reasons: Japanese and American violence in South Korea, the trauma of losing her family members, rejection and stigma in South Korea as a Yankee whore, giving birth to a son whose father was a mystery, marrying an American man in South Korea and immigrating to the United States (US) and discriminations in the US, and all these turmoils finally causing schizophrenia. The analysis and interpretation of the memoir reveal a finding: amidst Koonja’s sense of diasporic displacement and worthlessness, culinary kinship functions as a means of assimilation, and her culinary choices, which have been saturated by nostalgia for and memory of Korean food, reunite her with an emotional and a gustatory home. The finding implies a therapeutic connection between diaspora and culinary choices revealing food as a healing space in the life of Koonja. Hence, the paper not only offers a fresh perspective to look at the memoir but also creates avenues for critical dialogues in the discourse of diaspora and culinary identity.

Extalgia: Transcending the Legible Frames of Diaspora

Since Johannes Hofer's coinage of the term nostalgia in the seventeenth century, which he used to describe the pathological suffering of Swiss soldiers serving abroad, various disciplines engaging with migration and the broad-based discourse of diaspora have focused on this experience to the extent of “theoretical closure.” I argue that this discursive strand has prevented a systematic consideration of the simultaneous suffering and creativity that are provoked in stay-at-homes when their loved ones are dispersed to other lands. This article draws upon insights from the Ogu cultural practice of effigy carving in the representation of departed twin children to underscore how dispersal from the homeland provokes suffering and creativity in the left-behind, and is generative of what I have termed extalgia. Further, I illustrate the networks of suffering and creativity that are implicated in extalgia through an exploration of theoretical and empirical possibilities within the broader discourse of diaspora that mobilizes African and African diaspora textuality and culture to animate the complex spatiotemporal trajectory of the term. While premised on the fundamental discourse of diaspora, the article draws substantially from the iterations of exile as a strand of diaspora in its illustration. The article concludes that extalgia facilitates new understandings of how the absence of the dispersed is commemorated and curated in homeland memory through the expression of suffering and creativity by stay-at-homes, and challenges us to transcend the legible frames of diaspora to a holistic rendition of the experience as a spectrum. Ultimately, the article invites scholars to consider the various ways in which the concept of extalgia is dramatized in other disciplinary contexts across the globe, particularly concerning the ideational and practical borders and networks between extalgia and the time-honored notion of nostalgia.

The Lure of Diaspora: Diaspora Discourse, Accented Style, and Sinophone Malaysian Culture

The Lure of Diaspora: Diaspora Discourse, Accented Style, and Sinophone Malaysian Culture

Yiddish Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Translation and American Independent Cinema

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish (dir. Eve Annenberg, 2011), a film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, addresses itself simultaneously to a Yiddish-speaking demographic and a wider US audience not only via a mixing of languages but also through the operations of the subtitle. The film accesses Yiddish from a wide range of perspectives, deploying language, Jewish rituals, Yiddish language klezmer music and tradition to underscore the relevancies of Shakespeare’s text to ex-Orthodox constituencies. Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish places in the spotlight a relatively unknown dimension of New York culture, and one that deserves attention, not least because the film politicises the plight of its dispossessed subjects inside discourses of Jewish identity and diaspora. Translating Romeo and Juliet thus, Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish expands our sense of what an American cinematic Shakespeare might be. It enables reflection on the complexions of contemporary Judaism and stimulates a more nuanced awareness of secular and Orthodox relations in early twenty-first-century America.

Особенности реализации концептов СВОЙ и ЧУЖОЙ в дискурсе русскоязычной диаспоры Китая (на примере интернет-сообщества «Байки лаовая»)

The purpose of the research is to develop a model of interaction between the concepts ONE’S OWN and ALIEN in the conditions of the Russian-speaking diaspora discourse of China. Scientific novelty of the study lies in analysing in a comprehensive manner the “one’s own - alien” dichotomy as a basic model of formation of the evaluation category, which is implemented in the discourse of the largest Internet community of the Russian-speaking diaspora in China “A Laowai’s Tales” on the social network VKontakte. The work resulted in the description of the concepts ONE’S OWN and ALIEN under the influence of a different national-cultural conceptual sphere, in the reconstruction of a model of opposition of these concepts, as well as in the identification of trends in the interaction and transformation of the concepts ONE’S OWN and ALIEN in the diaspora discourse.

What is Armenia to Me? Diasporicity in the Works of William Saroyan

This article argues for a rereading of William Saroyan, one that treats him as an artist who engaged critically with concepts of home and homeland within the broader discourse of diaspora. Saroyan was not a panegyrist who idealized what it meant to be an Armenian in diaspora, nor did his Armenianness act as a foil to an optimistic outlook. Rather, his works exhibit a rigorous investigation of the characteristic liminality of diaspora and its attendant contradictions.

Digital polycentricity and diasporic connectivity: A Norwegian‐Senegalese case study

AbstractDigital communication remains largely unexplored in sociolinguistic research on diaspora and language. In this paper, ethnographically collected data from Norway‐based families of Senegalese heritage are explored to identify how family members use digital media to engage with diaspora concerns and projects, and how this engagement shapes their multilingual practices online. We re‐contextualize the concept of polycentricity (Blommaert et al.) from the physical setting of a neighbourhood or region to complex ecologies of digital media, and identify four ‘centres’, that is, distinct orientations for participants’ digital language and literacy practices, in which linguistic choices are associated with diaspora discourses, genres, and imagery. Each centre constrains the deployment of linguistic and semiotic resources in ways that are related both to historically rooted sociolinguistic hierarchies and affordances of digital media. The findings support a key claim in language and diaspora research, that is, the fine‐grained patterning of linguistic resources in diaspora communities. They also underscore the need to extend the empirical scope of a sociolinguistics of diaspora from co‐present to mediated interaction, and to explore the interplay between the two.

Clandestine crossings: Narrating Zimbabwe’s precarious diaspora in South Africa in Sue Nyathi’s The Gold-Diggers (2018)

ABSTRACT While there is a growing interest in Zimbabwean literature about diasporic experiences in the UK and the USA, scholarship on literary engagements with the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa remains sparse. This article analyses clandestine migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa and the formation of a precarious diaspora in the host country as represented in Sue Nyathi’s 2018 novel The Gold-Diggers. In contrast to strategies seen in South-North migration writing, those adopted by Nyathi’s migrants and diasporic subjects to negotiate everyday challenges – such as the need to pass as South African – reflect the close historical and cultural ties that structure African borderlands. Nyathi’s polyvocal text reconfigures diaspora discourse in relation to class and community, drawing attention to migrant vulnerability while illustrating strategies of resistance through identity erasure and homemaking. It carves out a space for precarious, yet not wholly disempowering, intra-African migratory and diasporic experiences often elided in diaspora studies.

RETHINKING SINO-FRENCH DIASPORA FROM CROSS-CULTURAL POINT OF VIEW

The paper aims to re-think the similar and contrasted parts of contemporary Sino-French diaspora through the extended perspective of Chinese self-image from the methodology of comparative literature, by analyzing the Post-colonialism and Marginal Discourse to Diaspora Discourse. How these diaspora writers/artists both acknowledge and challenge the attachment/memory in a diaspora framework as their cross-cultural identities? How the identity intended to eliminate the concept of national borders? How the identity by describing the cross-cultural elements to carry out the dual identities of Sino/ French?
 
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Diaspora and Diasporic Literature: Condition to Consciousness

The term "Diaspora" originated from the experience and state of the Jews of being exiled into many countries back in the eighth century BCE. However, the definition of diaspora derived from the Jewish condition has changed and expanded; so has the concept of diasporic literature. In this context, the aim of this article is to inform the readers that there are some clear lines of demarcation between these key terms namely “Diaspora” and “Diasporic Literature” by showing the discrepancy between these two key terms that are most frequently used and are liable to be conflated in existing and upcoming diaspora discourse due to lack of its deeper understanding. This paper draws from the scholars like Martin Bauman, Robin Cohen, Thomas Faist and Uma Parmeswaran who write on diaspora, and brings it into open discussion among academics whether being a diaspora is a condition or a consciousness? The article discusses how has diasporic literature so far been understood and what are the alternative ways to comprehend it. It concludes that if a piece of literature has some of the qualities of diasporic literature as articulated by Parmeswaran, it will be apt to call it diasporic literature, instead of labeling it as emigrant’s or immigrant’s literature based on the origin, e/(im)migration, station or mobility of the author.

TRANSNATIONALISM OF INDONESIAN DIASPORA YOUTH: POLITICAL MOVEMENT THROUGH THE CONFERENCE OF INDONESIAN DIASPORA

Objectives: This paper is aimed to study the transnational activity committed by Indonesian diaspora through the process of global framing as a way to influence the Indonesian political policies, namely, the rights of dual citizenship.
 Methodology: This study uses a qualitative research method and the technique of interview, literature studies, and documentation data gathering. The use of multi-level strategy in transnational advocacy networks is utilised to find the patterns of network segmentation, where the multi-level strategy itself consists of the grassroots level, national to international level. 
 Main Findings: The process of global framing by IDN Global have also showcased the input and the ongoing process, however, the output and the outcome are yet to come in the phases of initiation which then resulted in the formulation of initiatives on transnationalism long term goals and sustainability. The discourse of diaspora constitutes a new culture of Indonesia, thus several transformations that are conducted by the government aimed in empowering its diaspora requires a deeper process and further research..
 Implication: In accordance to the transnational activities in the shape of global framing conducted by IDN Global in influencing Indonesian government policy shows input and ongoing processes, however, the output and overcome are yet in the process of initiation which resulted in the formulation of initiatives as an effort of a long term goal-oriented transnationalism.
 Novelty/ Originality of the Study: This writing will explain how far the effort of transnationalism conducted by the IDN Global, have accommodated the various aspirations to political contestation inside of the congress.

A More Proximate Form of Theory: Tracing New Interdisciplinary Ground through Discourses of Diaspora and Haptic Aesthetics


 Cultural geographers Nigel Thrift and Stephen Pile have asked, “how is it possible to make sense of our selves, if the boundaries that tell us who ‘we’ are are incoherent, or fragmented, or fuzzy[?]” (1995: 179). One promising answer to this question has been to deconstruct the otherwise stable sense of identity that has marked the body in discourses of culture and transnational geography. The emerging interdisciplinary field of haptics (referring to the study of the sense of touch) offers a new way of investigating the boundaries that mark the body in the contexts of culture and literature, specifically exploring who is touched, who touches, when touch begins, and when it ends, in order to creatively examine boundaries of culture, which although fragmented, shifting, topographically uneven, offer unique and productive ways of re-conceptualizing transnational identity. Tracing the expanding the field of haptics to the discourses of diaspora and cultural studies, this paper will discuss haptic aesthetics in the shifting terrain of cultural studies and diasporic theory, for what this emerging field suggests about the incoherent nature of cultural boundaries and alternative possibilities for transnational community formation.

Unreconciled Strivings of ‘Exilic Consciousness’: Critical Praxis of Resistance in Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin

This article discusses how Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin, its thematic concerns and aesthetics, are developed in tandem with the discourse of diaspora and exilic consciousness leading to critical praxis. It traces the interactions between exilic consciousness and identity construction in the context of resistance literature. These interactions exhibit the author's ability to be inside and outside discourses of struggle producing a model in which exile challenges bigoted struggles, hence the evolution of critical praxis. In the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Abulhawa represents another humanistic voice that resists dominant political narratives by dismantling their hegemonic power structure.

Lived Afropolitanism: Beyond the Single Story

Abstract It has been several years since the term “Afropolitanism” was coined and instigated an intense debate in both the offline and online world. Although Afropolitanism is celebrated for highlighting positive depictions of Africa, it has also been criticised for its supposedly exclusive and elitist focus. Several scholars have distinguished Afropolitanism from Pan-Africanism by framing it as the latter’s apolitical younger version. Following the discussion around these perceived differences, this paper investigates how Afropolitanism negotiates the African diaspora discourse in relation to Pan-Africanism. Thus far, the study of Afropolitanism has remained mostly limited to the field of literary and cultural studies. In order to move the discussion on this term further, this paper explores the lived experiences of twelve black Londoners with Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism. By using the notion of “performance,” I show that Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism are constructed and deconstructed in both diverse and overlapping ways. The narratives emerging out of this dialogue question the centrality of the Middle Passage epistemology and the tendency to essentialize experiences in the African diaspora discourse.

АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНІ УЯВЛЕННЯ МИСЛИТЕЛІВ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ДІАСПОРИ: РЕЛІГІЙНІ ТА ФІЛОСОФСЬКІ ВПЛИВИ

The study examines theoretical sources of the Ukrainian diaspora thinkers that influenced ideas about the person. Through the prism of the diversity of their creative heritage, one can identify the peculiar directions of their religious and philosophical vision, which was based on spirit, mind, heart, transcendence, which correlate with the Divine principle of human existence. It is emphasized that the ideas about a person of the Ukrainian diaspora thinkers were influenced, firstly, by religious ideas (ethnic religion, Christian anthropology); secondly, anthropological problems in the works of ancient Rus' thinkers (the development of the idea of cordocentrism); concepts about a person Gregory Skovoroda, Pamfil Yurkevich (the doctrine of the "internal" person, the heart as the focus of spirituality and morality) thirdly, the Western European philosophical anthropological tradition (psychoanalysis, existentialism, personalism, dialogism, etc.). Due to the existing positions, it can be established that the anthropological trend in the religious views of the Ukrainian diaspora was expressed in such positions: the anthropological perspective was comprehended against the background of a religious worldview, which was reflected in the model of the "man-God-peace" relationship. Diaspora scholars have identified man as the highest value, reflected in its everyday orientations and priorities. Their anthropological teaching is based on the existential-anthropological dominant, which largely determines the content and basic structural and semantic aspects of their religious and philosophical heritage. In fact, the assertion and actualization of diaspora discourse took place on the basis of a synthesis of the domestic religious and philosophical tradition and pan-European anthropological ideas. Intertwining into a kind of mosaic, various influences formed the syncretic religious-philosophical doctrine of person, which is key to the writings of diaspora thinkers.

Accented Style: On Namewee’s Sinophone Malaysian Film and Rap Songs

Focusing on Namewee’s rap songs and his film, this essay uses Sinophone theory and accented cinema theory to explore how sound and image are used to perform Sinophone identity through journeys of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The essay demonstrates that Namewee’s works are neither a national allegory nor an exilic/diasporic allegory, and therefore that neither the perspective of national discourse nor diaspora discourse can adequately frame his works. Sinophone Malaysian accented cinema is an appropriate one from which to approach Namewee’s films. In the theoretical framework of accented cinema, Namewee is a postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmaker; in the Malaysian context he is “not quite” equal to Malays, and neither is he accepted or trusted as a full citizen. The accented style of Namewee’s works is intimately linked to localization, diaspora and against-diaspora experiences, and Chinese–Malay relations. He has successfully updated the understanding that accented style can only be produced from exile/diaspora experience, demonstrating that against-diaspora experience and localization can also create an accented style. This essay analyzes the re-presentation of Sino-Malay relations in Namewee’s works and discovers that they refuse to rely on the standard ethnic framework. Rather, the accented style of these works gives play to the multiply mediated, multidirectional critical agency of Sinophone theory: the Sinification discourse of “authenticity” is criticized, while at the same time a performance of national identities is used to resist the presence of racism and expose the essentialized Malay mythologization of indigeneity.

The Cultural Politics of Aspiration: Family Photography’s Mixed Feelings

This article describes the relationship between family photography, oral history, and feeling. The authors explore questions about affect and family photography in relationship to black, queer relationality and to Asian, diasporic subjectivities. They argue that the affective modality of family photography for marginalized subjects is that of ‘mixed feelings’, which they analyze through a focus on ‘aspiration’ as central to the visual and affective discourses of family photography, oral history, and diaspora. Working with recent work by Christina Sharpe and Tina Campt, the authors describe aspiration within family photography as indexing both the normative temporalities of capitalist futurity and, at the same time, a utopian technology of black futurity that enables the making of necessary futures outside of white supremacy and heteronormativity. The research is part of a larger photography and oral history project, The Family Camera Network, which the article describes.