Diaspora

For this blog post I wanted to talk about the term I am presenting on in class tomorrow. The term is diaspora.There are two very different meaning to the term. The first is Diaspora with a capitalized "D". When diaspora is capitalized it refers to the specific historical and biblical event of the jews being dispersed from the Holy Land and refers to the jews that are still living outside of Palestine. Diaspora with a lower case "d" is referring "to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands and the ensuring developments in their dispersal and culture" (Seigel).

Diaspora(with a lowercase d) is associated with colonialism, postcolonialism, and post-colonial theory. Colonialism is the practice of domination, which invokes that subjugation of one people to another" (SEP). It involves the transfers of a population who become permanent settlers but still have allegiance to their country of origin. Postcolonialism is there period of time when the domination by European empires was decreasing. When using post colonialism as a critical theory is refers to "a collection of theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture (literature, politics, history, and so forth) of former colonies of the European empires, and their relation to the rest of the world" (Seigel).

Diaspora(with a lowercase d) is significant in terms of identification and hybridity. If identification is the ways in which we identify with others and the world, diaspora will effect the ways in which people identify with their culture and the rest of the world. The "ensuring developments" of diaspora can hinder certain ways in which peoples identify with their culture and traditions but it can also create and new type of culture. Hybridity is a mix of different cultures due to colonization. Diaspora creates a hybridity of cultures which develops new traditions, literature and even genres.

In "A Voice From the South" and "A Strong Race Opinion" both deal with the effects of diaspora. In "A Strong Race Opinion" by Pauline Johnson, she talks about the young "Indian" girl. She says,"the author permits his Indian girl to get herself despised by her own nation and disliked by the reader" and that they are portrayed very inaccurately (Johnson 387). This is because, as Johnson writes, "half our authors who write up Indina stuff have never been on an Indian reserve in there lives…what wonder there conception of people they are ignorant of, save by hearsay, is dwarfed, erroneous, and delusive" (Johnson 388).

The young female Indian in portrayed in way that is nothing like they really are because they have only been written by the white man, who nothing about them or their traditions. In "A Voice From the South", Anna Cooper begins by taking about two different types of writing or writers. There first is "those who write to please", they are the poets (Cooper 380). The second is the preacher, those who write "with a purpose or a lesson" (Cooper 381). These to types of writing, or genres, are not enough for Cooper. She claims that there needs to be a place African-American writers. She say even thought emancipation has given the bald man speech he still does not have voice or agency (Cooper 383). Cooper is arguing that we need a genre for the black women writer(and the black writer in general). 

To me, this seems to tie into rhetorical theory because it is like both Cooper and Johnson are telling other rhetorical theorist that they need to reexamine their types or criticism and that diaspora, including its effect, is a type of criticism that needs to be put into practice more. 

Work Cited

"Colonialism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/

Seigal, Kristi. Introduction: Glossary of Literary Terms. http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm#post