From: abramsob-AT-ERE.UMontreal.CA (Abramson Bram Dov)
Subject: Re: disjointed semi-explanations
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 11:19:29 -0400 (EDT)


hi,

> On Tue, 8 Apr 1997 TABRON-AT-BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU wrote:
> > I don't want to hold you to any flattening approach, either, but some
> > comparative statements might be useful, i.e. would you perhaps say that the
> > South Asian diaspora is more similar to the Jewish diaspora than the African in
> > the sense of its longing for an unreal source or home? Or could we say that all
> > three diasporas depend on a sense of nostalgia that is really
> > self-perpetuating, that has nothing to do with a real home or one's spatial or
> > temporal distance from it?
> > 
> > Judith
> > 
> I would say the latter.
> 
> R

[to delurk, at least for a bit]
I'm dubious about the above (diasporas "depend on a sense of nostalgia 
that is really self-perpetuating, that has nothing to do with a real home 
or one's spatial or temporal distance from it").

Not to linger on whether diasporic "nostalgia" is really 
self-perpetuating: of course it is.  Isn't that the very definition of 
the memorial?  Once diasporic "nostalgia" (memory? specific alignments of 
memory? the mingling of memory and longing?) stops perpetuating itself, 
it's not there anymore.

But doesn't diaspora have *everything* to do with a real home?  Isn't it 
precisely about the relationship between oneself (one's cultural 
identity), one's "real home" -- I take your meaning as "where one lives", 
roughly) -- and diasporic imagining of another "real home", or perhaps 
simply another home?  And, then, isn't the relationship between those two 
types of "home" mediated by diasporic community, by regular interaction 
with and amongst those who are similarly positioned/who position 
themselves between these two homes (the "real", I suppose, and the 
imagined)? 

So, in that kind of set of interlocking relationships, I'd think that 
topographical configurations (re: spatial distance) are quite important.  
That is, the question of where the two homes are situated with respect to 
each other, geographically and otherwise, is certainly present.  I can't 
speak to other diasporas, but it's probably relevant to mention that the 
Jewish year-cycle, through holidays, commemorated events, &c is quite 
specifically oriented towards the agricultural cycle of the Middle East, 
or to point to daily prayers recited facing Jerusalem.  If nothing else, 
this would seem indicate some sort of concern with spatial relationship 
(the place of "distance" -- how far? to what extend does that matter? -- is 
more ambiguous here) between the two sets of "home", and in the setting 
up of "diaspora".  (Which, of course, was until the mid-20th c never 
called "diaspora" [Gk. scattered] in Hebrew -- even if the concept pf 
"scattered among the nations" was underlying -- but "galout" [exile]).

Bram Abramson <abramsob-AT-ere.umontreal.ca>
Laboratoire de recherche sur les politiques de communication
Universite de Montreal