Diaspora and diasporic literature
In this week’s column, I want to briefly discuss an emerging, but an
important concept in world literature which has only begun to receive
attention of academics and critics alike. The concept is diasporic
literature that we in Sri Lanka have not fully grasped due variety of
reasons. This week, I want to provide a brief outline on diasporic
literature including a case work based on a recent publication that
provides valuable theoretical framework on the Indian diasporic
literature.
What is diaspora?
The word diaspora originates from the Greek word, diasporá meaning, a
dispersion (scattering). Diaspora may be defined as dispersion of
people, language, or culture that was formerly concentrated in one
place. When an individual or group of people start producing literary
production about people or language they may have disinherited but
writing in another language, they may be defined as diasporic
literature. As a result, we hear about Indian diasporic writings in UK
or Canda or Sri Lankan diasporic literature in Australia and so on.
The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) traces the etymology of the word
'Diaspora' back to its Greek root and to its appearance in the Old
Testament (Deut: 28:25) as such it references. The Dictionary commences
with the Judic History, mentioning only two types of dispersal: The
"Jews living dispersed among the gentiles after the captivity" and The
Jewish Christians residing outside the Palestine.
The dispersal signifies the location of a fluid human autonomous
space involving a complex set of negotiation and exchange between the
nostalgia and desire for the Homeland and the making of a new home,
adapting to the power, relationships between the minority and majority,
being spoke-persons for minority rights and their people back home and
significantly transacting with the new “Sense of Place”; a new unknown
geographical space.
The search for a definition of diaspora could be a complex task
because of each individual or group of people’s historical experiences,
routes and agendas. One of the foundation approaches into diaspora had
been undertaken by Safron (William Safran’s typology, 1991) who
developed a definition using the elements of trauma, exile and
nostalgia. However, it became evident that compiling a definition based
on the memories of one diasporic community may be difficult and thus,
turning it into an archetype could be less productive. New approaches
followed examining an ethnographic approach, focusing on different roots
and routes (Clifford, 1997) pointing not only to the diversity of the
histories, but also to the wider politico-economic conditions that
prompted transnational movements and also, the epistemological framework
(the need for the creation of a new field having its own methodologies)
that tries to figure out the latter with the re-launching the term
diasporas.
Sarfan points out that the term Diaspora can be applied to expatriate
minority communities whose members share some of the following common
characteristics examining diaspora as the people:
1.whose ancestors have been dispersed from a special original
'centre' or two or more 'peripheral' foreign regions;
2.Who retain a collective memory, vision or myth about their original
homeland and its physical location, history and achievements;
3.Belivers who are not fully accepted by their lost society, and
therefore, feel partly alienated and offended from it;
4.Who regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal home and
as the place to which they or their descendents would (or should)
eventually return when conditions are appropriate;
5. Who collectively committed to the maintenance or restoration of
their homeland and its safety and prosperity; and
6.Who continue to relate, personally and vividly to their homeland
and their ethno- communal consciousness and solidarity are importantly
defined by the existence of such a relationship. ( Safren Willam cited
in Satendra Nandan: 'Diasporic Consciousness' Interrogative
Post-Colonial: Column Theory, Text and Context, Editors: Harish Trivedi
and Meenakshi Mukherjee; Indian Institute of Advanced Studies 1996,
p.53)
Diasporic literature
Diasporic literature could be examined using several key features.
First, it is based on the idea of a homeland; a place from where the
displacement occurs. Secondly, diasporic literature provides narratives
of harsh journeys undertaken for various reasons. Thirdly, diaspora
provides accounts of another “sense of place” away from home land.
Fourthly, one could read how “homeland-made” protagonists behave in a
far of land either adopting or rejecting new cultural codes of their new
“sense of place”. Therefore, when reading diasporic literature, we can
learn why and how some people choose to migrate to another country
either voluntarily or due to other reasons, and how they get used to
living perhaps, “peacefully” elsewhere, but losing home and homeland.
Diasporic literature may also represent and delve with concepts such as
nostalgia, memory and even lamentation of losing one’s native language,
homeland and friends and so on.
Indian diaspora
Australian academic Vijay Mishra in his recent book, “Literature of
the Indian Diaspora - Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary “(Routledge
2007) is a path finding work on this new emerging discipline. It is not
only a major study of the literature and other cultural texts of the
Indian diaspora, but also an important contribution to diasporic theory
in general. Mishra examines both the 'old' Indian diaspora of early
capitalism following the abolition of slavery, and the 'new' diaspora
linked to movements of late capitalism. Mishra argues that a full
understanding of the Indian diaspora can only be achieved, if attention
is focused on locations of both the 'old' and the 'new' in nation
states. Applying a theoretical framework based on trauma,
mourning/impossible mourning, spectres, identity, travel, translation,
and recognition, Mishra embraces the term 'imaginary' to refer to any
ethnic enclave in a nation-state that defines itself, consciously or
unconsciously, as a group in displacement.
In his study on diaspora, Mishra, examines the works of key writers,
many now based across the globe in Canada, Australia, America and the
UK, c overing V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, M.G. Vassanji, Shani Mootoo,
Bharati Mukherjee, David Dabydeen, Rohinton Mistry and Hanif Kureishi to
explain how they exemplify both the diasporic imaginary and the
respective traumas of the 'old' and 'new' Indian diasporas.
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