Week Five: Ien Ang

Beyond “Asian Diaporas”

1.     Note the importance, and understand the significance, of prefatory comments:   “the movement of peoples from parts of Asia to other parts of the world (and back) has had a longstanding and complex history, a history that cannot be told in any singular, one-dimensional, or teleological manner.”  p. 285

2.     Historical association of Diaspora with the archetypical Jewish case p. 186

3.     “where the classic definition of diaspora emphasized the traumatic past of the dispersed group, in todays usage trauma is located as much in the present, in the contemporary experiences of marginalization or discrimination in the nation-state of residence.”  p. 286

4.     “Diasporic groups imagine themselves increasingly not as “ethnic minorities” within nation-states, but as transnational subjects whose affiliations and loyalties reside in the interstices between nation states:  they cannot be contained within the boundaries of any nation-state, be it the homeland, the host society, or any other country.”  p. 287

5.     “nation-states, as discrete territorial and governmental units within a much larger world of global flows and exchanges, are no longer in full control of the composition of their populations or capable of commanding people’s movement in and out of their territories.” p. 287

6.     Read and understand the final paragraph on page 288.  We will be thinking about this, in relation to the idea of Latin America and continental divides as we move into the next few weeks.  Paragraph begins:  “But if the nation state as the predominant discrete unit of analysis of area studies is now deeply contested, then the status of a larger, more encompassing unit of analysis Asia—should also be put under erasure.”   Be able to talk about this in detail.