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Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’: 1. Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations ed. by Judith Misrahi-Barak, Claudine Raynaud

2017; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ari.2017.0023

1920-1222

Judith Lütge Coullie,

Migration and Labor Dynamics

Reviewed by: Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’: 1. Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations ed. by Judith Misrahi-Barak, Claudine Raynaud Judith Lütge Coullie (bio) Judith Misrahi-Barak and Claudine Raynaud, eds. Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’: 1. Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranée, 2014. Pp. 376. NZ$33/$30CAD. Since the late 1980s, the term “diaspora” has gained widespread currency: Rogers Brubaker reported in 2005 that a Google search for the word yielded a million hits, most of which were not academic (1). Its use and meaning have become “slippery” (Misrahi-Barak and Raynaud 12). Initially restricted to refer to the migration of specific groups around the Mediterranean, it is now “a privileged term . . . used broadly to denote a number of different kinds of . . . situations of mobility” (Edwards 81). In their introduction to Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’: 1. Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations, editors Judith Misrahi-Barak and Claudine Raynaud quote Khachig Tölölyan in stating that diaspora study investigates “the history, culture, social structure, politics, and economics” of traditional diasporas and “new transnational dispersions” (13). Misrahi-Barak and Raynaud agree that diaspora studies is “firmly grounded on interdisciplinarity” (11). The essays in Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race,’ however, tend to cluster primarily around cultural responses to transnational dispersals. Almost all of the sixteen contributors declare literary/cultural studies affiliations. The two exceptions are Louise Cainkar (a sociologist) and Lars Hinrichs (a sociolinguist). The editors explain the volume’s disciplinary inclination: It is a truism to affirm that the literary text displays not only the mirror of the contemporary world, but also elements for an understanding of the consciousness and the elusive ‘identity’ of the diasporic subject. At its best, re-presentations also contain epistemological resources. Where the social sciences supply analyses and figures, fiction, poetry, art work, in short cultural productions, may even anticipate the insights delivered by objective data. (Misrahi-Barak and Raynaud 15–16) [End Page 179] Some discursive/disciplinary clustering must surely be inescapable in a collection of this sort: because diaspora studies comprehends a catholic field, only an encyclopaedia could adequately address the diverse concerns of scholars. The book’s restricted scope is thus unsurprising; it is also a strength, allowing for fuller coverage of the circumscribed area. Readers whose interest in diaspora studies is linked to “aesthetic and literary representations” (Misrahi-Barak and Raynaud 18) will find much of value. However, scholars whose research in diaspora studies is aligned with fields like political science, international relations, public policy, economics, law, sociology, geography, eco-criticism, and anthropology are likely to find fewer rewards. The book is divided into four parts. The four essays in Part One “map the different theoretical borders, territories and taxonomies associated with diaspora” (Misrahi-Barak and Raynaud 19). It is in this section of the volume that diaspora researchers in social sciences and related subject areas are likely to find fertile material. Françoise Lionnet challenges conventional notions of cosmopolitanism as surplus and creolisation as deficit, bringing them into dialogue in relation to the “Creole Indian Ocean” (32). Ashraf Rushdy, in a thought-provoking essay, uses the example of the African diaspora (a term which he suggests refuses essentialism, racial or other, and insists on difference) to examine two discourses employed to understand social relations in the wake of a rupture: diasporic and political apology. Shu-mei Shih critiques the category of “the Chinese diaspora” (76), which she argues is “complicit with China’s nationalist calling to the ‘overseas Chinese’” and “unwittingly correlates with and reinforces the Western and other non-Western . . . racialized construction of Chineseness as perpetually foreign” (79). She proposes, as an alternative, Sinophone studies. The three essays in Part Two focus more narrowly on particular cultural texts. Mireille Rosella examines identity politics of the transitional Roma community as represented in Tony Gatliff’s film Gadjo Dilo. Johan Jacobs analyses internal displacement and diaspora in Njabulo Ndebele’s novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela and Bénédicte Ledent reads Caryl Phillips’ novel In the Falling Snow, not as a “mere [illustration] of existing theories” but as a springboard “towards further conceptualization or re-conceptualization” (162) by which concepts such...