Fiction: HSL2060

Instructor: Dr. Natasa Thoudam

In Today’s Session
“Diaspora”
 Diaspora
Origin of the term:
1. “The word diaspora comes from the ancient Greek dia
speiro, meaning ‘to sow over.’” (Britannica)
Two meanings and spellings (Britannica and Merriam
Websters):
Diaspora: Particular to Judaism (the Jews)
diaspora: General to all (settled or dispersed away from
homelands)
 Diaspora
Origin of the term:
2. “From the Greek meaning ‘to disperse’ (OED).
Diasporas, the voluntary or forcible movement of
peoples from their homelands into new regions, is a
central historical fact of colonization.”
“The practices of slavery and indenture thus resulted
in world-wide colonial diasporas.”
“Blackbirding” (Ashcroft et al.)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/blackbirding
 Diaspora:
(Stéphane Dufoix )
1. “First, diaspora is undoubtedly a Greek word
(διασπορά) encompassing the idea not only of
‘dispersion’ but also of ‘distribution’ or ‘diffusion’,
and, as such, does not carry a negative
connotation.
2. “Second, in Greek it has never been used to
describe Greek colonization in the
Mediterranean.”
3. “Third, it is not a translation of the Hebrew words
galuth or golah, meaning ‘exile’ or ‘community in
exile’.”
 A religious word (first)

third century bce, the Septuagint, the translation into Greek

of the Hebraic Bible
“the divine punishment – dispersal throughout the world –
that would befall the Jews if they failed to respect God’s
commandments. Not only does the word refer to a
theological, eschatological horizon, and not an historical
situation, but the dispersal, as well as the return of the
dispersed, is a matter of divine, and not human, will.”
 The Jewish debate
linked to Zionism
“The complexity of the meanings of diaspora in Jewish history can
be organized according to two axes: the first separates
conceptions founded on exile from those founded on community.
In the first case, galuth calls for a return that must occur in time,
be it eschatological in the case of Judaic Rabbinism or political in
the case of Zionism; in the second, galuth is separated from the
question of a return and calls for the constitution of links in space,
either without a state in the case of diasporism, as Dubnow for
instance proclaimed it, or with a state (or a centre according to
Ahad Ha’am) as we can see in the recognition of tfutsoth.
Exile:
Eschatological horizon
Historical and political horizon
Community:
Trans-state link
Centre–periphery link
 The first scholarly uses
Academic: late 1970s onwards
“From the first decades of the twentieth century onwards,
several general processes characterize the evolution of
diaspora: first, secularization, that is, the extension to
nonreligious meanings; second, trivialization, namely the
widening of the spectrum of relevant cases; and third, but
only later, formalization, or the establishment of criteria that
allow the shift to occur from a definite to an indefinite
category with its subtypes.”
 Diaspora as a motto
• “a change in its semantic charge from negative to
increasingly positive. In this respect, from the mid-1960s
onwards, it became more and more popular in some social
circles eager to display their identity as both irreducible to
the boundaries of a nation (because of its dispersed
condition) and united by a common heritage, ancestry,
civilization, language, ethnicity and race. “
• African or black diaspora
 Proto-definitions
• Before 1970s
• “a geographical concept” (French geographer Maximilien
Sorre: “‘number of emigrants’ for three populations”
• ‘trade diaspora’ (Abner Cohen, a British social
anthropologist)
“the concept of ‘trade diasporas’ or ‘commercial diasporas’ to
refer to the spatial organization of the trading peoples of
West Africa”

• ‘diaspora nationalism’ (the Australian political scientist

Kenneth Minogue)
“associate diaspora with nationalism”
 Comparison
Diaspora
“The notion of diaspora
generally denotes a gain of
various capitals: success,
double inclusion, the
establishment of
transnational connections
and networks, enjoyment of
mobility a flexible citizenship
offers, and an imagined
ancestral and historical
homeland.”
Reverse
Diaspora/Deportspora
• “forced return”, “an abject
diaspora”
• “Deportspora denotes an
absence of all of these
things, whereby members
are exposed to multiple
uprooting, multiple
deportations and
re-migrations, stuck in a
condition of stretching
social abandonment,
experienced by being
regarded both as failed
citizen and migrant before
and after deportation.”
 Digital Diaspora
“Digital diasporas were defined by Alonso and Oiarzabal
(2010: 11) as ‘distinct online networks that diasporic people
use to re-create identities, share opportunities, spread their
culture, influence homeland and host-land policy, or create
debate about common-interest issues by means of electronic
devices’. They are different from virtual communities and
nations by the fact that strong ties with real nations pre-exist
the creation or re-creation of the digital community.”
“Three transforming processes”:
1. “enabling criticism and renewing feelings of belonging to
the homeland”;
2. “the emergence of a public space for diasporas’ memory
and mobilization; and
3. “an increased capacity of agency”
 Digital Diaspora Versus
‘Old’/Traditional Diaspora
Digital Diaspora ‘Old’/Traditional Diaspora
• “Instantaneity, ubiquity and • “diachronic”
synchronism” • Distinct/separate
• Intertwined/ intermingle:
local and global
migrants and non-migrants,
locals and diasporans,
mobile and non-mobile
populations