Week Five: Palumbo-Liu

Asian Diasporas, and Yet. . .

1.     Cultural rituals articulate:  p. 279

2.     What does this mean:  the testing out of the notion of diaspora p. 280  Apply this to everything we are testing out in this course.

3.     How do “these specters of ‘homogeneity’ and boundedness haunt the logic of this collection?  p. 281

4.     Really examine the final full paragraph on page 281, and relate it to the question of “Asia” on page 288 of Ang.  Particularly the section beginning “But we are still faced with the question, why retain Asia?...”

5.     The oppositional strategy (from the West) pp. 281-2

6.     In relation to “the West and the Rest division”  “I would suggest a wider inquiry into the driving forces behind the movement of populations outside the homeland.”  p. 282  Think about this in relation to our discussion of colonization, and the Wong piece.

7.     Etymological and historical relationship to Jewish notion of galut:  look at this entire paragraph on p. 283 and Palumbo-Liu’s final statement “the transposition of diaspora from the premodern to the modern and postmodern historical moments cannot completely slough off the historical and foundational element of disenfranchisement and statelessness that drives the identification with home.”

8.     “we should also consider that there is an abiding possibility that the cultural identification with home is more than (merely) sentimental.”  P. 283