Diaspora
Volume
2, Number 3, Winter 1993
Articles:
Inhabiting
the Metropole: C. L. R. James and the Postcolonial Intellectual of
the African Diaspora
Anuradha Dingwaney Needham
Dingwaney
Needham's reading of C. L. R. James rejects conceptions of resistance
that require the occupation of an uncontaminated cultural space as
a prerequisite.
Her
account of postcolonial and diasporan resistance(s) rearticulates
the question that Said poses to Foucault's work: how to develop an
adversarial alternative to power without becoming dependent upon its
epistemology, practices, and values? She argues that James embodied
one way that an intellectual can be a partisan of his own people even
while inhabiting other epistemological allegiances.
Invisible
Baggage in a Refuge from Nazism
Leo Spitzer
Spitzer's
partly autobiographical account of Jewish refugees in Bolivia in the
late 1930s and early 1940s begins with the remembrance of texts he
viewed and read in childhood, which provided imaginary connections
with Central Europe. His essay then modulates into an interview-based
narrative of the refugees' initial encounter with Bolivia, and culminates
in an analysis of the photographic and written texts in which they
represented that encounter. In these, Spitzer discerns "invisible
baggage": categories and ideologies of pictorial representation
derived from Central European habits of seeing and feeling that continued
to construct experience in a new diaspora.
Dancing
with the Bones: A Comparative Study of Two Ukrainian Exilic Societies
Marian J. Rubchak
Rubchak
examines two Ukrainian communities, one relegated to "internal
exile" in its native city of Lviv while under Polish domination
in the sixteenth century, the other in "external exile"
or diaspora in twentieth-century Chicago. Her richly detailed essay
argues for the importance of myths, rituals, and institutions, even
when their development is discontinuous to such an extent that they
become empty forms before being revived and invested with new meanings
and practices in changed diasporan circumstances. Woven into the essay
is a narrative concerning the two major Ukrainian religious institutions,
the Vatican-oriented Uniate ("Greek Catholic") and the Byzantine-rite
or Orthodox churches, and an account of the relation between their
conflicts and the moments of Ukrainian peoplehood, nationality, and
ethnonationality.
Postcolonialism
and the Dilemma of Nationalism: Aijaz Ahmad's Critique of Third-Worldism
Neil Lazarus
Lazarus
both reviews Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory and intervenes in the discussions
of imperialism, nationalism, and Marxism that in recent years have
structured postcolonial discourse and debate. He finds much to praise
in Ahmad's critique of contemporary theory's easy disapproval of insurgent
nationalism, as well as in its neglect of the materiality of subject
positions and collective identities. But he also demonstrates the
untenability of the criticisms Ahmad directs at Edward Said and condemns
their ad hominem character. Finally, he argues that Ahmad errs in
assigning a large role to "Third-Worldist" cultural nationalism
in shaping the Anglo-American Left's positions.
Thinking
Empowerment through Difference: Race and the Politics of Identity
Steven Gregory
Gregory
explores the reciprocal relations between politics and group identity
in diaspora: politics can emerge from the conflict of ethnically and
racially based group identities, but it is also the case that, as
Stuart Hall wrote, "the constitution of identities ... is itself
part of [a] political struggle." Reflecting on the Afro-Caribbean
diaspora of New York City studied by Philip Kasinitz, Gregory argues
that the proper contexts for the exploration of its shifting identitarian
alliances include local, national, and transnational social formations.
Affirming both the heterogeneity and the constitutive reciprocity
of race and ethnicity in this diaspora, Gregory questions whether
the facts justify Kasinitz's tendency to situate the "hard reality"
of the last instance in race alone.
