Diaspora
Volume
2, Number 1, Spring 1992
Articles:
The
Political Fallout of International Migration
Milton J. Esman
Esman
surveys transnational migration from low-income countries to
those with growing economies. He criticizes the stereotype of
the "apolitical foreign worker" and discusses the
transformation of labor diasporas into political actors.
By
focusing on the USA's response to Mexicans, Germany's to Turks and
Kurds, France's to North Africans, and Japan's to Koreans, he identifies
factors that shape reception and adaptation, ranging from the attitude
of labor unions in host countries to the homeland governments’
reluctance to relinquish control over their diasporan nationals.
Nationalism
and Oneirocriticism: Of Modern Hellenes in Europe
Stathis Gourgouris
Gourgouris
argues that the current refiguration of the nations of Europe into
a postnational European Community necessitates an interrogation of
classical "Greece's traditional status as the political-philosophical
ancestor of modern European civilization" and a reconciliation
of it with the problematic status of Modern Greece. The antagonism
between the "social-imaginaries" of Modern Greece and Europe
is elucidated by a wide range of reference to theories of society
(e.g., Castoriadis, Zizek) and to the history of state-making in Modern
Greece. The difficulties the EC is encountering point to the abiding
tension between "the dream of difference and the seduction of
globality."
Exile
and Political Activism: The Egyptian-Jewish Communists in Paris, 1950-59
Joel Beinin
Beinin
investigates "the discursive, social, and historical elements
in the formation of culture and identity" by focusing on "the
Rome Group" of Egyptian-Jewish communist exiles who had been
prominent in the development of Egyptian Marxism before the creation
of Israel, were expelled or left voluntarily after 1948, but remained
active. "The Rome group's claims to be a legitimate part of Egypt
were contested not only by the regime they opposed, but also by their
closest political allies." These claims continue to imply questions
(as to who decides group identity) that have implications for every
act of contested self-definition by exiles.
"The
Invisible World the Emigrants Built". Cultural Self-Inscription
and the Antiromantic Plots of The Woman Warrior
Patricia Chu
Chu
explores the ways in which Maxine Hong Kingston uses very different
narrative traditions, ranging from Chinese legends to Anglo-American
novels, to depict and defy the Chinese and American social forces
that in different ways "deny her experience, worth, and right
to speak." While the European "female bildungsroman"
provides "a powerful subtext" for The Woman Warrior, Kingston's
depiction of "a struggle for personal and artistic autonomy"
resists domination by either of the formative national traditions,
and succeeds instead in inscribing the author as the orchestrator
of a dialogue between them.
"God
made me a Lithuanian". Nationalist Ideology and the Constructions
of a North American Diaspora
Marian J. Rubchak
Rubchak
begins by exploring an original Lithuanian ideology of "unique
national character" that was synthesized out of notions current
in Germany and Russia in the nineteenth century. Reviewing Van Reenan's
history of the Lithuanian diaspora and contesting the strict binaries
it envisages between assimilation and the maintenance of national
identity, she discriminates between various forms of immigrant commitment
to diasporan institutions and to the needs of a homeland whose political
situation has also changed repeatedly.
The
Diaspora of the Novel
Artemis Leontis
Leontis
reviews Layoun's study of the Travels of a Genre, which explores the
"newly instituted modern space" to which the novel was exported
from western Europe. Discussing the different dynamics of novelistic
migration and assimilation in Greece, Egypt, Japan, and the Palestinian
diaspora, Leontis concurs with Layoun's argument that while "pressures
faced by societies that were not western European [led them] to assimilate
novelistic ideas and forms," this reception was not a passive
one. Indeed, Leontis adds, "a revision of theories of the novel
is necessary" to accommodate the ways in which novels shaped
the "particular kind of imaginative geography that attaches identity
to a map" and "perform[s] a foundational task of nation-building."
