Diaspora Experience Research Articles

THE WAY TO UNITY: THE IDEA TO CREATE THE WORLD CONGRESS OF FREE UKRAINIANS

Summary. The history of the Ukrainian diaspora/emigrants makes up an integral part of the Ukrainian history. The article traces the path of foreign Ukrainians to unification in order to defend the interests of the entire Ukrainian people. The successful Jewish experience may serve as the vivid example. The latter lived scattered for ages, but united and established World Jewish Congress in 1936, being able to declare the State of Israel in 1948. The purpose of our study is to trace the origins of the idea to consolidate the Ukrainian emigrants and to establish the only coordinative institution for the whole Ukrainian nation from all over the world in the 1920s, its evolution and the practical measures for its implementation. The successful experience of the Ukrainian diaspora can serve as a model for the modern Ukrainians, while the analysis of the mistakes of the latter can help to avoid them at the contemporary stage of state formation. Methodology. The methods to solve the aforementioned problem are the following: 1) the method of historical comparison of the Ukrainian and Jewish experience of consolidation; 2) historiographical analysis and synthesis; 3) inductive and deductive reasoning. The scientific novelty of our research is in the comprehensive step-by-step study of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians. Conclusions. The powerful centers of the Ukrainian political emigration appeared in the 1920s. They aimed to restore Ukraine’s unity and independence. However, there was disagreement among them, given the fact that they struggled for power in 1917–1920. S. Petliura was one of the first competent political leaders, who realized the necessity of consolidation. His associates A. Shulgin and V. Prykhodko made the first attempts to organize the World Ukrainian Congress in the 1930s. The idea was supported in Galicia and in the USA, though it wasn’t implemented. The same process may be noticed in the Jewish diaspora at the same time; however, they summoned the World Jewish Congress in 1936 and declared their own state. Because the Ukrainian politician leaders failed to create a single political center, the Soviet diplomats became the legitimate representatives of Ukrainians during and after the World War II. The establishment of the Pan-American Ukrainian Conference (PAUC) in 1947 is thought to be the pre-condition for summoning the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, as it was one of its key tasks. A. Melnyk was one of the most active lobbyists of the Ukrainian unity. He also introduced the idea of the organization superstructure. PAUC made a few attempts to summon the congress in the 50s – 60s of the 20th century, but none of these were successful. Consequently, the Ukrainian emigrants were disappointed with its PAUC’s ability to accomplish the task successfully. Despite this fact, in January 1967 PAUC published/promulgated the manifesto on summoning the World Congress of Free Ukrainians launched the active propaganda campaign, and the long way of the Ukrainian nation to consolidation met with success in November.

Rereading Diaspora

The contemporary diasporic experience is fragmented and contradictory, and the notion of ‘home’ increasingly blurry. In response to these moving circumstances, many diaspora and multiculturalism studies’ scholars have turned to the everyday, focussing on the local particularities of the diasporic experience. Using the Italo-Australian digital storytelling collection Racconti: La Voce del Popolo, this paper argues that, while crucial, the everyday experience of diaspora always needs to be read in relation to broader, dislocated contexts. Indeed, to draw on Grant Farred (2009), the experience of diaspora must be read both in relation to—but always ‘out of’—context. Reading diaspora in this way helps reveal aspects of diasporic life that have the potential to productively disrupt dominant assimilationist discourses of multiculturalism that continue to dominate. This kind of re-reading is pertinent in colonial nations like Australia, whose multiculturalism rhetoric continues to echo normative whiteness.

La crítica de la modernidad desde el Caribe: lecturas negras de la filosofía (blanca) de la historia

El texto reflexiona, en primer lugar, sobre el eurocentrismo de las teorías de la secularización y su desatención a la incidencia de la Conquista, el colonialismo y la esclavitud en el surgimiento de la modernidad. Luego, a partir de algunas definiciones claves del ensayo caribeño anticolonialista (C. L. R. James, Depestre, Fanon), las cuales ponen de manifiesto la «blancura» de la moderna filosofía de la historia que justificó la convivencia de la esclavitud con la emancipación del hombre, se considera la «racialización» del progreso como una de las modulaciones más evidentes de la paradójica dinámica secularización/sacralización que caracteriza a la modernidad. Se observa que, mientras el ensayo anticolonialista afrocaribeño se apropia de un aparato de pensamiento marxista que permite deconstruir los mitos occidentales (el progreso, la raza, los ideales «universales» de la Revolución francesa), las creencias, sin embargo, retornan en la literatura a través del imaginario emancipatorio de la negritud y la experiencia política (secularizada, resacralizada) de la diáspora africana como sujeto revolucionario.

Kineska dijaspora u Srbiji

The focus of the paper is better understanding of the experiences of the Chinese diaspora who lives in Serbia, their perception of Serbia as their destination country and their view on the economic environment and the quality of life in Serbia. The research was conducted in the period from June to December 2017, and included 52 representatives of Chinese diaspora in Serbia. As a method of research semi-structured interview was used. Results show that representatives of the Chinese diaspora do not recognize Serbia as a very favorable business destination and most of them see their stay in Serbia as temporary and dependent on economic conditions.

Kahlil Joseph, New Media, and the New Black Cinema: A Case for Situation Kahlil Joseph’s Audiovisual Work within the Theoretical Frameworks of African Film

This article explores the various ways that African American filmmaker Kahlil Joseph represents contemporary experiences of the African diaspora in his new media work, Belhaven Meridian (2010). Reflecting the present world system's complex network environment, Joseph's screen text is a node within numerous theoretical networks, oscillating within disparate conceptual frameworks concurrently. Weaving the strands of these divergent theories together with the "crossroads" concepts from Harry J. Elam Jr., Kennell Jackson's Black Cultural Traffic (2005), and Akin Adesokan's Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics (2011), this article scrutinizes Joseph's work through intersections of emergent music video and new media theories, as well as film theories from African, American, and European perspectives. The article argues that such an approach enriches the didactic possibilities of their respective and, simultaneously, entwined theoretical branches.

Re-Mapping Culture and Identity: Diasporic Theorisation and Dislocation Strain in the Selected Poems of Agha Shahid Ali

Diasporic writings occupy a place of great significance between countries and cultures, mostly as a response to their lost homes. Addressing the predominant issues of dislocation, nostalgia, discrimination, survival, cultural change and identity-crisis, dislocation is one of the stern feelings that rip apart the diaspora community. When people find themselves dislocated from their native strain, their mental trauma haunts them incessantly, and they strive to re-locate themselves by remembering their nostalgic past. The earnest quest for self identity remains the central praxis for an individual’s social existence. But how to reach to its end –either by retreating from the world into one’s shelled cocoon or by adopting moderate adherence to Westernization remains much a debatable concern to be answered by nations as well as by the individuals at large. Diasporic literature deals with these experiences of migration and exile, cultural or geographical displacement and the diasporic writers often remain preoccupied with the elements of nostalgia seeking to re-locate themselves in new cultures. Agha Shahid Ali is a Kashmiri poet, who despite being a migrant to USA transcends all geographical, national, and cultural boundaries by the dint of his sheer poetic brilliance. He articulates vehemently his diaspora experiences of “loss and exile” in his poetry and as a visionary integrates the global and the local. In this paper my aim is to represent how literature and culture inter-relates to form the basis of an independent original expression and in turn reflect the problems and aspirations of an individual’s existence in the society. Ali the eminent Indian poet represents his earnest urge to relocate his Self amidst “cultural hybridization” asserting his transnational identity to transform ‘violent cartographies’ to ‘The Ghat of the Only World’.

Outside the Frame: The Josef Nassy Collection and the Boundaries of Holocaust Art

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s largely unknown Josef Nassy Collection is situated at the intersection of multiple cultural histories of migration and oppression. Josef Nassy (1904–76) was an artist of African, Sephardi, and European descent from the Dutch Caribbean colony of Suriname. While interned in Belgium and Germany from 1942–45, he created a poignant visual diary that brings into view unfamiliar facets of the Nazi camp system as well as unexpected points of intersection between Jewish and African diaspora experience. This article traces the story of the Nassy Collection’s wartime creation and postwar reception to illustrate how entrenched categories of art and victimhood can obstruct our access to the past. In contrast to this reception history, Nassy’s artworks encourage a relational approach to Holocaust studies, one that is attuned to the entanglement of European and colonial wartime experience and the diversity of Jewish identities.

German Catholicism at War, 1939–1945 by Thomas Brodie

Reviewed by: German Catholicism at War, 1939–1945 by Thomas Brodie Jean-Guy Lalande German Catholicism at War, 1939–1945. By Thomas Brodie. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2018. Pp. xi, 275. $93.00 cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-882702-3.) What roles did Catholicism play in shaping Germans’ experiences and understandings of World War II? Such is the question that Thomas Brodie answers in this well-researched and well-written monograph, which focuses on the Rhineland and Westphalia. These two regions represented heartlands of German Catholicism and were homes to the archdiocese of [End Page 149] Cologne as well as the dioceses of Aachen and Münster. They were also part of the Ruhr industrial belt, which was heavily bombed by the western Allies during the war. During the 1930s, the Nazi regime pursued increasingly hostile policies towards the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, at the outbreak of the war in September, 1939, the Catholic hierarchy in western Germany urged the faithful to fulfill their patriotic duty, though with less rhetorical enthusiasm and nationalist fervor than their forebears had displayed in August, 1914. They also expressed their hope for a swift end to the hostilities. While Catholic bishops and theologians described the war as a divine punishment for a secular and sinful humanity, Protestants saw the war as an opportunity to redeem the national disgrace of November, 1918, and prove the nation worthy of divine favor. Between 1939 and 1941, this commitment to the national war effort on the part of German Catholics expressed itself in various ways: German bishops did not speak out against the atrocities perpetrated against Polish co-religionists and the Jews; most Catholics accepted the regime’s claim that the war was defensive in nature and rejoiced at the news of the fall of France in June 1940. As the war on the Eastern front and Allied bombing raids on the German home front intensified between December, 1941, and June, 1944, Catholics responded to these developments in complex and diverse ways. On the one hand, bishops and priests appreciated the slackening of Nazi anti-clerical policy; on the other, though clerical and lay support for the war effort remained generally strong throughout 1942, the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in February 1943 and the subsequent advance of the Red Army placed real strains on the Catholic community’s cohesion. Criticism of the Nazi authorities increased, as a result of these military setbacks, and even Hitler’s own popularity showed signs of erosion. The final collapse of morale—defeatism—among Catholics occurred only from the summer of 1944 onwards. From the early stages of the war, the Nazi authorities imposed various pressures on the Church’s resources, both in terms of personnel (extensively recruited to the armed forces) and infrastructure (in the wake of Allied bombing raids) that greatly hindered parish life. More specifically, did the war years invigorate religious life in German society? Brodie’s answer is that levels of religious engagement oscillated. Though the Neo-Scholastic language of episcopal pastoral letters did little to inspire the laity to greater devotional efforts, religion helped sustain Germans’ morale and their perception of the war’s legitimacy, with women and the elderly at the forefront [End Page 150] of Catholic religious practice. In particular, as rituals of individual bereavement and communal solidarity, funerals and memorial services mobilized religious sentiments in large sections of the population. Brodie’s second thematic chapter (“The Catholic Diaspora—Experiences of Evacuation”) is arguably his most original. As Allied bombing of the German home front intensified from 1943 onwards, evacuation measures scattered Catholics throughout the Reich. Such wide geographic dispersal resulted in the dislocation of parish life and, simultaneously, the emergence of great pastoral challenges. Indeed, in these new surroundings, the makeshift living conditions experienced by many evacuated people, the widespread tensions with the local population, the demonstrations of confessional hostility from Protestants, the cultural divides between rural and urban areas, and the lack of priests—all had a negative impact on the levels of religious engagement, to the bitter disappointment of the clergy ministering in the diaspora. Popular defeatism and alienation from the Nazi regime increased during the final—and so destructive...

Intersections of Empire, Post-Empire, and Diaspora: De-Imperializing Lusophone Studies

The present article opens with a generic plea for the de-imperialization of Lusophone studies. A de-imperial turn should allow researchers to explore more thoroughly the experiences of diaspora and exile that an empire-centered history and its spin-offs have obfuscated; it should also help to de-essentialize depictions of Portuguese heritage and culture shaped by these narratives. Such a turn promises to address the multiple identifications, internal diversities, and racialized inequalities produced by the making and unmaking of empire. My contribution consists of a few ethnographic-historic case studies collected at the intersections of empire, post-empire, and diaspora. These include nineteenthcentury diasporic movements that brought Portuguese subjects to competing empires; past and present celebrations of heritage in diasporic contexts; culture wars around representations; and current directions in post-imperial celebrations and reparations.

“We’re Holding our Ground”: Body Politics, Verbal/Non-Verbal Performance, and Dissent Aesthetics in Rafeef Ziadah’s Performance Poetry

Rafeef Ziadah is a Palestinian performance poet and human rights activist who uses the power of the spoken word interfused with stage performance in order to mainstream Palestinians’ experiences of occupation, diaspora, and dispossession as much as the daily struggle for survival, steadfastness, and resistance into American and human pop culture. Performance Poetry, as such, has become a platform for social and political dissent where the poet/performer begins her performance with a Palestinian story at the same time that she instructs her audience to “click, clap, or smile” in order to engage with the Palestinian narrative. The paper weaves together performance studies and body politics in order to examine the interplay between the spoken word and storytelling, on the one hand, as well as facial expressions, voice, movements, and audience engagement as integral to the performed art, on the other. The paper also examines the negotiation between art and politics as well as the aesthetic value of performance poetry and its socio-political implications on the other through different approaches to Aesthetics theory with particular reference to R.G. Collingwood and Marshall McLuhan. Moreover, it explores the social, political, and lived aspects of aesthetics that the performance poet attempts to illuminate by drawing attention to the networks of solidarity within and without the Palestinian community.

An Exploration of Queer Diasporic Subjectivities in Shani Mootoo’s 'Out on Main Street'

In view of the acute lack of analyses of Indian-Trinidadian queer diasporic subjectivities, this article will focus on Shani Mootoo’s “Out on Main Street” by using a queer diasporic theoretical framework, one which hinges on unveiling the violent practices to which sexually and racially marginalized communities are exposed and on exploring the ways by which queer diasporic subjects subvert dominant assumptions. In order to carry out the analysis, I will, first, offer an overview of the uses and implications for invoking the concept of a queer diaspora to study Mootoo’s story; second, I will scrutinize the manner in which the queer diasporic narrator is affected by exclusivist definitions of gender and national identities, and, third, I will examine the specific tactics through which she unsettles the normative logic. Ultimately, the study of Mootoo’s story under a queer diasporic approach will offer a further insight into the diaspora experience, one which considers both sexuality and translocation as crucial factors shaping the way the narrator inhabits the city.

The Musical Experience of Diasporas: The Return of a Ghanaian Tabom Master Drummer to Bahia

This article studies the construction of transatlantic diasporic identities through musical and religious experience. The case study is of a recent visit to Bahia (Brazil) of the Ghanaian master drummer Eric Odarkwei Morton, a self-declared descendant of freed slaves who resettled from Bahia to West Africa in the nineteenth century. It explores the role of memories, beliefs, expectations, and musical aesthetics during Morton’s encounters with local musicians and devotees of Afro-Brazilian religions. I frame Morton’s visits to Afro-Brazilian Candomblé worship houses as the encounter of two worlds that idealize each other in their desire to connect with an ancestry rooted at the other side of the Atlantic. I argue that the potential of these encounters to be felt as a confirmation and a celebration of a common ancestry is actualized only in the context of musical experiences in which participants are deeply moved and feel understood.

"접촉 공간과 몸에 새겨진 기억: 팔레스타인 작가 가싼 카나파니와 모나 하툼의 경우"

This paper discusses the ways in which a Palestine novelist Ghassan Kanafani and a Palestine artist Mona Hatoum represent the traumatic experiences of diaspora and (absence of) the Palestine nation in their works. Being displaced from their own ancestral native territory, Kanafani and Hatoum recapture the traumatic memory inscribed in diasporic bodies and skin in different ways. This paper first looks at Kanafani’s novels, Returning to Haifa (1969) and Men in the Sun (1963), including Tawfiq Salih’s filmed production of The Dupes (1972) based on Men in the Sun, in order to examine how the novels embody the trauma of Nakba in the year 1948 and how they use the theme of masculinity to narrate diasporic bodies and their experiences of loss and shame. Exploring the theme of bodies, entrails, and skin in Kanafani’s novels and corporeality of memory in his narratives, this paper then analyzes Hatoum’s early videos and performance including Measures of Distance (1988) and The Negotiating Table (1983) in order to sketch out how the artist inscribes the public/political geography of contact zone unto her private body signified as the place overlaid with intimate traumatic memory and histories of the Palestine nation. Finally, this paper finishes with some brief comments on the relationship between epistolary styles and the theme of exile in Kanafani’s early works and Hatoum’s Measures of Distance.

„Daję ci te wspomnienia niczym nasiona…” — transfer diasporycznej pamięci następnego pokolenia w powieści „Lesia’s Dream” (2003) Laury Langston

Метою цієї статті є аналіз роману Лори Ленґстон Мрія Лесі (2003) з перспективи досліджень пам’яті та виявлення мнемічного потенціалу дитячої літератури. Головна героїня роману розглядається як постать, яка передає і отримує пам’ять. Автор статті показує, що, використовуючи історію канадського інтернування українців під час Першої світової війни — найбільш травматичного досвіду української діаспори в Канаді — Ленґстон ство-рює оповідь, яка може ініціювати передачу як індивідуальної, так і колективної памʼяті наступному поколінню. Як результат, роман Ленґстон уможливлює прищеплення пам’яті української діаспори її наймолодшим представникам, які не знають України, а також включення досвіду першої хвилі української імміграції до канадської культурної пам’яті. Аналіз роману показує, що для збереження почуття єдності діаспорній спільноті слід активно звертатися до спогадів і минулого, уникаючи таким чином загрози втрати власної ідентичності.

Object-Oriented Diaspora Sensibilities, Disidentification, and Ghostly Performance

Object-Oriented Diaspora Sensibilities, Disidentification, and Ghostly Performance

Toward Culturally Tailored Advance Care Planning for the Chinese Diaspora: An Integrative Systematic Review.

Background: The Chinese diaspora experiences disparate end-of-life (EOL) care outcomes. Advance care planning (ACP) may be an effective intervention to improve EOL care, but its reception and uptake in the Chinese diaspora are unknown. Objective: Review and synthesize current literature to develop a culturally tailored ACP framework for the Chinese diaspora. Design: A systematic integrative review framed by Whittemore and Knafl's method was conducted in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Data Sources: PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and University of York Center for Reviews and Dissemination were systematically searched for articles published before February 2020. All English, peer-reviewed quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method literature studying ACP in Chinese adults living outside China and Taiwan were included. A mixed-method appraisal tool was utilized for quality assessment. Results: The search yielded 836 unique articles, from which we included 30. Integrative synthesis resulted in a novel framework to guide culturally tailored ACP among the Chinese diaspora. The framework highlights the importance of an authority-initiated, indirect approach to ACP that maximizes individual and collective harmony. Furthermore, due to evolving sociodemographic and acculturation factors, the perception of harmony may differ between individuals and generations. Conclusion: The Chinese diaspora population is willing to engage in ACP. An individualized, culturally sensitive approach that captures and maximizes harmony will be central to the success of ACP in this population. Further work is required to understand the influence of serious illness, spirituality, and family on ACP.

Beyond the Francophone Maghreb

The study of North African literatures has been firmly rooted in francophone frameworks since the 1960s, an approach that perpetuates colonial categories of both space and language. It is thus imperative to continue to push the study of North African cultural production beyond the geographic and linguistic limitations of the so-called Francophone Maghreb. This Introduction outlines the history of the study of North African literatures, and suggests a series of under-studied questions critical to the future of the field. How do other languages in the region intersect with French? How do individual North African works and writers problematize monolithic definitions of nationalism and regional identities? How do authors in the diaspora experience their North African identities in new languages and new contexts? How do the literatures and cultural productions of the Maghreb relate to the rest of Africa, and to other spaces such as the Middle East and the Mediterranean? These questions provide the thematic grounding that unites the articles of the current Special Issue, and evoke further avenues of expansion for the field of North African studies.

Feeling Asian Together: Coping With #COVIDRacism on Subtle Asian Traits

Since the onset of COVID-19, incidents of racism and xenophobia have been occurring globally, especially toward people of East Asian appearance and descent. In response, this article investigates how an online Asian community has utilized social media to engage in cathartic expressions, mutual care, and discursive activism amid the rise of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia during COVID-19. Specifically, we focus on the 1.7-million-strong Facebook group “Subtle Asian Traits” (SAT). Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the 1,200 new posts it publishes daily have swiftly pivoted to the everyday lived experiences of (diaspora) East Asians around the world. In this article, we reflect on our experiences as East Asian diaspora members on SAT and share our observations of meaning-making, identity-making, and community-making as East Asians collectively coping with COVID-19 aggression between January and May 2020.

The Sixth Zone: Historical Roots of African Diaspora and Pan-Africanism in African Development

The re-emergence of Pan-African ideology in the last two decades is reflected in social, political, and economic structures found in Africa today. Pan-Africanism was the foundation upon which the struggle for African continental independence was anchored. This ideology united Africans and other individuals of African descent under a continental ideology that created a domain for support, cooperation and understanding. Today, Pan-African ideology has become a pull factor for the African diaspora to contribute to African development initiatives. By tracing the historical emergence of African diaspora and Pan-Africanism in Africa, this article argues that Pan-African ideology and the experiences of African diaspora has influenced increased contributions of African diaspora to development. Using explanatory methodology, this article adopts an in-depth analysis of historical accounts of the emergence of African diaspora to examine how the African diaspora has emerged as a strong pillar of development.

Culinary diaspora space: Food culture and the West African diaspora in Hong Kong

This article examines how food practices contribute to the lived experience of the West African diaspora in Hong Kong. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observations of Africans in different African restaurants, grocery stalls and cultural events, this article proposes the concept of a “culinary diaspora space” to examine how they navigate spaces of solidarity and struggle during their integration process through African food-related practices. It highlights the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are contested by revealing the practical and symbolic roles played by migrants’ traditional food culture throughout the integration process. This research argues that African food outlets are a space of social frictions but also of possible cultural encounters between the Africans and Hong Kong Chinese. By focusing on food-related practices, this research demonstrates how the West African diaspora is felt, embodied and perceived by the host society.