Blackwell Reference Online

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A term traditionally associated with the Jewish exile, but now used in C ultural theory to cover a range of territorial displacements, either forced, such as indenture and slavery, or voluntary emigration. Recent formulations have stressed not only the complex ties of memory, nostalgia, and politics that bind the exile to an original homeland, but also sought to illuminate the lateral axes that link diasporic communities across national boundaries with the multiple other communities of the dispersed population. Paul Gilroy's (1993) image of the “Black Atlantic,” for instance, evokes an imagined geography of the African diaspora, a space not reducible to an original source, but where divergent local experiences of widely dispersed communities interact with shared histories of crossing, migration, exile, travel, and exploration, spawning hybrid C ultures . Much of the current work on borders, transnational networks, and global public culture draws on this concept of the diaspora to understand the spectrum of displacements, revivals, and reconfigurations of identities and traditions that characterize the contemporary global cultural landscape. See also H all , S tuart ; H ybridity . 1990 : “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” . 1993 : The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness . 1990 : “Cultural identity and diaspora.” . ... log in or subscribe to read full text