The Caribbean Diaspora/Caribbean Homeland Dialectic and the Global Caribbean

• Author: Locksley Edmondson
• Pages: 260-288

260 GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES

an academic journal labelled Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies was

launched in 1991 with the following rationale:

Diaspora is dedicated to the multi-disciplinary study of the history, culture,

social structure, politics and economics of both the traditional Diasporas –

Armenian, Greek, and Jewish – and those transnational dispersions that in

the past three decades have chosen to identify themselves as “diasporas”.

These encompass groups ranging from the African-American to the

Ukrainian-Canadian, from the Caribbean-British, to the New East and South

Asian and Québécois Diasporas.

Diaspora provides a vital forum for debate on increasingly flexible terms

such as “diaspora”, “nation”, and “transnationalism”. Articles span a variety

of disciplines. . .1

An intriguing aspect of the foregoing rationale is this example of a delayed,

long overdue, admission to the mainstream of “diaspora studies” of those

formations which are said to have recently “chosen” such self-identifications.

This conveys the implication that the so-called “traditional diasporas” are

objectively endowed with diasporic attributes in contradistinction to seemingly

subjective diasporic claims of more recent “transnational dispersions”.

The expansion of “diaspora studies” beyond a “traditional” focus is also

addressed in a 1986 edited volume entitled Modern Diasporas in International

Politics, described by the editor as a contribution to a “relatively new field” of

academic enquiry.2 In similar vein, the United States-based Social Sciences

Research Council in the late 1980s to the early 1990s launched a research

project to define and explore the relevance and significance of diasporic studies/

analysis in the context of the United States/continental African nexus.

Such relatively recently emerging academic undertakings in mainstream

the CarIbbean DIaSpora/CarIbbean

homelanD DIaleCtIC anD the

Global CarIbbean

LOCKSLEY EDMONDSON

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Caribbean Diaspora 261

Western World academia could well have profited from an earlier recognition

of the concerns and activities of historical Pan-Africanists, from the early 19th

century onwards, very much including Jamaica’s first National Hero, Marcus

Garvey, who in the early 20th century sought to mobilise political, economic,

cultural and psychological challenges by “Africans at home and abroad” (on the

African continent and in the African diaspora) against then entrenched White

World imperialist and racist impositions.

By the late 1960s, insurgent challenges in American academia were most

effectively manifested in the “Black Studies” movement, labelled in some quarters

as the “Africana Studies” mission,3 fundamentally linking the African American

experience to the continental African and other Black World situations, thus

energising and expanding frameworks for “diaspora studies”. Of relevance in

this expanding context was the initiation in 1965 of the “UNESCO General

History of Africa” eight-volume project, which included the mandate that the

study of continental Africa should also encompass relevant studies of the African

diaspora, historically as well as in a contemporary setting.4

Not surprisingly, a number of seminal studies on the African diaspora (largely

inspired by the United States racial context of African American diasporic

mobilisation) have appeared over the past three decades.5 This preliminary

focus on the broad ambit of African diaspora studies is of central importance to

the Caribbean region with its vast populations of peoples of African origin,

dislocated historically from their original homelands over many centuries of

traumatic enslavement, yet persisting in challenging White racist impositions

and asserting notions of Black dignity and empowerment. Such is the context in

which notions of the “Black Atlantic” are salient and in which the Caribbean

presence looms large.6

“Diaspora Studies” have now become more widespread and regularised

undertakings in the academy, transcending the original focus on so-called

“traditional” or “classical” diasporas – the archetypical Jewish experience – and

encompassing a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The

founding of the academic periodical Diaspora in 1991 is thus symptomatic of

such trends. So too is Robin Cohen’s 1997 book on Global Diasporas: An

Introduction, launching a publication series on “global diasporas” under his

editorial direction.7

Burgeoning migration flows in recent times especially from South to North

— reflecting a reversal of previous patterns of North to South population transfers

in the heyday of European imperial expansion — have ascribed much salience

to the globalising process and impact of diasporic political, economic and cultural

mobilisation. Thus is explained the motivation underlying the appearance of

“Special Report Diasporas” published in a very recent issue of The Economist.8