Diaspora Identities (PDF)

refers to the modern period, which covers, roughly, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Looking at notions and the historical meaning of nations, nationhood and nationalism(s) in a late antique, medieval or early modern perspective could reveal more about the contexts in which nations are shaped and nationalisms arise. Hence in a broader perspective, nations can be defined as ethnic, religious or cultural communities which do not necessarily relate themselves to a territory or a nation-state. However, they do perceive themselves (or are perceived) as a distinct group apart. Dealing with different notions and concepts of nation and nationalism, out of which present-day concepts evolved, a comparative approach to nations and nationalism could help to understand patterns of belonging and separation over time and space. It could also enable historians of all periods to gain from each others' expertise. The formation of distinct barriers between nations was and is meant to protect "imagined communities" (Benedict Anderson) against other communities that seem to be at odds with one's own community or threaten its very existence. In the modern period, more often than not, nations were constructed within a distinct territory. A leading group attempted to achieve sovereignty for their nation and to maintain their distinct culture, language and sometimes one unifying religion, with one myth about the emergence of the nation and with specific institutions forming the state's government. Those are meant to guarantee the distinctiveness and the economic, political and cultural survival of the nation. However, nation-states are only one option. As Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin (1993) suggest, nations can rise and survive in entirely different settings. If we look at the characteristics of a nation as developed above, these are fundamental to diaspora communities as well - excluding in some ways the territory or the state aspect. However, many of these diasporas make efforts to form a sovereign nation-state such as the Sikh diaspora; others, such as the Jewish or the Irish diasporas, already have homelands indeed. Exile or diasporas can encourage nationalism: the notion and the dream of the homeland become strong uniting elements (Cohen 1997, 106). Other diasporas, though, or at least some representatives of these diasporas see cosmopolitan elements at the very heart of the nation in question. With regard to the specific history of the Jewish Diaspora, the Boyarins suggest that despite all dangers of antagonizing the host societies in which they find themselves, the Jewish Diaspora tradition must continue to insist on the respect for difference "within a world grown thoroughly and inextricably interdependent" (Boyarin 1993, 723). Jewish identity can never anchor itself in a self-satisfied resting place, or manifest itself as a form of nativism; it has to find expression through a perpetual, creative diasporic tension. In this deterritorialised notion of Jewish identity the Boyarins find a new idea as powerful as the Jews' contribution to the notion of monotheism: "peoples and homelands are not necessarily and originally linked" (Cohen 1997, 127). Today, globalisation, though not a new phenomenon, is one of the driving forces in the economy, politics and culture of different societies; political and social sciences have opened up to the concept of cosmopolitanism as a means of responding to the challenges of globalisation (Vertovec and Cohen 2002). Cosmopolitanism is referred to as "hybridity", which has been used "to denote the evolution of new dynamic, mixed cultures". Robin Cohen prefers "the long established concept of syncretism - the evolution of commingled cultures that are different from two or more parent cultures" (Cohen 1997, 130-131). However, the postmodernist "dissolution of authentically national cultural life into multinational eclecticism" (Shusterman 1993, 302) is not generally accepted. Universal principles, such as human rights, democracy and the acceptance of "otherness" (Beck and Grande 2004, 27), can be at odds with new nationalisms, local, regional and religious identities that seem to evolve as a counterpart to what is perceived as global homogenisation.