Becoming Strangers:
Travel, Trust, and the Everyday
Day 25: Diaspora
Beginning Again: What Is a Map?
Cartographers differentiate between three distinct
but related conceptual tools that we tend to lump
together under the term “map”:
PLAT. A graphical representation that clarifies
ownership.
CHART. A graphical representation that indicates
how to get from one place to another.
MAP. A graphical representation that codifies a
worldview and conveys its ordering principles.
Beginning Again Again: D+G = PolySci
Deleuze and Guattari are not thinking about the
nation-state when discussing “the state.”
By “state” they have in mind the totality of
socioeconomic, governmental, military, and
cultural entities that constitutes what we might
today refer to as the “world system” or “global
capitalism.”
Another pair of thinkers, Hardt and Negri, have
recently & influentially revived D+G’s arguments.
Instead of “state” they use the term “empire.”
Why D+G? The Cold War’s Over
Mid-20th Century: Are We Them?
The absolute distinction
between 1st and 2nd world
nations blurs after 1950.
The poet Allen Ginsberg
demonizes all governmental
authority as “Moloch” in
Howl (1956), the best-selling
poem of the 20th century.
In 1961 during his farewell
address, Pres. Eisenhower
warns against the “militaryindustrial complex.”
The New World Order
The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)
and the dissolution of the
Soviet Union (1992) ended the
“bipolarity” that dominated
world politics after the
Russian Revolution (1917).
In the resulting “multipolar”
system nation states appeared
weak when compared to
“global capitalism,” the
technology-abetted flows of
money & information &
people across all national
borders.
The Challenge to the Humanities
The humanities have traditionally been divided up along
nation-state lines.
The contemporary university retains these divisions:
“English literature,” “French history,” “Mexican art.”
D+G—and other thinkers—and history!—show us that
we can’t think that way anymore. We are in danger of
missing the big picture—the functioning of Empire in
general.
Worse. We might have been wrong all along.
Turn to a New Unit of Analysis:
The Diaspora
DIASPORA. Greek for “dispersion” or “scattering.”
Originally used to refer to those Jews who live outside of
their ancestral homeland of Palestine.
Subsequently used to refer to any people “scattered”
across national boundaries who do not physically
inhabit the territory or nation-state of their or their
ancestors’ origin.
The “Armenian diaspora,” for example, would include all
people of Armenian descent living outside of that part
of Central Asia traditionally called Armenia.
Defining Diaspora
Diasporas are difficult to define.
Who should be included? Everyone who self-identifies as
“Jewish,” “Armenian,” etc? Do adoptees count? Do
“assimilated” people count?
What about the slipperiness of identity categories? Is
there an “Asian diaspora” in the U.S.? If according to
Chinese definitions, anyone of Chinese descent is
Chinese, can one speak of a “diaspora”?
And if one can isolate a “diaspora” – what is it, exactly,
that one is studying? A culture? A nation? A race? A
collection of . . . stories?
Consider the Original Diaspora: The Jews
We discussed before the Exodus, the journey through the
wilderness led by Moses from Egypt to the “Promised
Land” of Palestine.
The Exodus serves as a story of the creation of a people (and a
nation state): we were Pharoah’s slaves, then we entered a
middle world, now we are remade as a free people with a
land that is ours.
The early kings made Jerusalem the governmental center of
this new state. Solomon built the chief Jewish temple there
ca. 957 BCE and during the 7th century BCE King Josiah
makes the Jerusalem temple the exclusive and only temple.
The Babylonian Captivity
Nebuchadnezzar II conquers
Judah in 597 BCE and
forcibly removes
thousands of Jews to the
city of Babylon.
In 586 he destroys Jerusalem
and razes the Temple.
During the next decades,
every revolt in Judah is
followed by further large
scale deportations.
In 538, Cyrus the Great allows
the Jews to return to Judah
and rebuild their Temple.
Aftermath of the Babylonian Captivity
Before 586 BCE, Judaism was a state religion centered on Jerusalem.
A priestly caste performed elaborate ritual sacrifices at a temple
that had been built by a king.
From 597 to 538 there was no Judah. From 586 to 515 there was no
temple. Judaism changed fundamentally.
The focus shifted from a place—the Jerusalem Temple—and its
associated hierarchy to a sense of collective responsibility for
remembering the past and participating in a living tradition.
The focus shifted to preserving texts (Scripture and commentary); a
language (Hebrew); and communal ties. Educated elders (later
called “rabbis”) supplanted priests, and meeting halls (later
known by the Greek word “synagogues”) supplanted the Temple
as the crucial sites for the creation & maintenance of identity.
Post-Captivity Judaism
515 BCE to 70 CE. A very large number of Jews remained in
Babylon. Jewish scholars wrestled with how to distinguish
the religious duties of “diasporic” Jews and those who lived
in Judah.
70 CE to 1948 CE. After a rebellion, the Romans razed the
Second Temple. For two millennia, Jews were a “diasporic”
people with no homeland. Two narratives—the Exodus and
the Babylonian Captivity—served as guides to the long
“middle world” of being a people with no place.
The poetic name for Jerusalem—Zion (one of the 2 hills on
which the city is built) – became shorthand for the future
utopian place where the diaspora could gather again.
Another Diaspora: The African Diaspora
The African Diaspora
Unlike most diasporas, the African diaspora does not
originate from a particular nation. The Middle
Passage was intended to strip people of their former
identities. They lost their goods, their families, their
names, and even their languages.
People who had been through the Middle Passage,
though, managed to pass along stories and music.
And they shared them with other peoples of African
descent.
The result was a creative, hybrid, though long
underground culture. Jazz, for example, “appeared” in
New Orleans in the early 20th century long after it had
been invented and perfected by slaves who spent their
free time drumming with each other in public squares.
The Black Atlantic
In the 1990s, scholars began to realize that they couldn’t
study, say, African American culture in isolation.
People of African descent in Europe, North, and South
America had long thought of themselves as sharing a
history and culture.
Musical innovations—jazz, blues, dub, samba, reggae,
calypso, bosso nova, rap, go-go, etc—have moved
freely between the West Indies, the US, Brazil, the UK,
etc. So too have novels, poetry, political polemics, and
autobiography.
Scholars realized that they had to begin thinking in
“transnational” terms about “The Black Atlantic” if
they were ever to understand some of the most
important cultural innovations of the last 100+ years.
Defining Diaspora:
Middle Passage as a Starting Point
Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is
known as the greatest blues
guitarist.
In “Crossroads Blues,” Johnson
plays with the old belief that
crossroads are dangerous
“middle worlds” where
chance encounters &
collisions occur.
He was said to have met Satan at
a crossroads and sold his soul
for the ability to play the
guitar like no one else.
Identity begins at a crossing—
selfhood is founded on travel
and “hybridity.”
Defining Diaspora:
Stealing from the Master
Bob Marley (1945-1981) grew up
in & out of the slums of West
Kingston, Jamaica.
During the 1970s he became the
best-known reggae artists in
the world.
His song “Exodus” employs a
biblical vocabulary (Babylon,
tribulation, Father’s land) to
advocate an uprising of
African peoples against the
white colonial powers.
Defining Diaspora:
Remembering Where You’ve Been
In the late 1980s, the rap collective
Arrested Development was inspired
by Public Enemy to use music as a
vehicle for serious political and
intellectual commentary.
The rise of West Coast gangsta rap in
the early 1990s eclipsed such
“cerebral” New York rap.
Songs such as “Tennessee” (1992)
though are worth remembering as
statements about the need to revisit
and re-sample the past, however
painful or embarrassing, if one is to
understand the present.