Towards a Diasporic Imagination of the Present.: An Eternal Sense of Homelessness.

This collection of three essays looks at the notion of diasporic identity. It is not redundant to ask if we, who are situated in the present, are more conscious and self-reflexive about our dis-located situatedness? It would be rather simplistic to argue that people are traveling or migrating (for socio-political-economic reasons) more frequently than usual in the early 21st century but there does seem to be a heightened sense of reflexivity about the Self-Other/ home-foreign dichotomy which compels and allows the migrant traveler to document and reflect about the socio-psychical processes that accompany this displacement. The movement from place A to place B, as a result of socio-cultural-economic imperatives, creates an awareness of the differences between both the places, making one conclude that there must be a desire within us which allows us to recognize difference and negotiate with it. These three essays examine this notion of displacement and the emergence of multiple realms of cultures which coexist alongside the dominant ones. We are, at the moment, currently poised to do away with simple assumptions which equate citizenship as being contained within monolithic identities. With the constant flow of people all across the world, we have become self-reflexive enough to theorize about this; more importantly, we project these anxieties and reflections onto the public realm, allowing ourselves agency to re-conceptualize fundamental notions of culture, identity and citizenship. Table of contents: 1. Introduction: By Tapati Bharadwaj. 2. A Diasporic Temporality: New narrative writing from Punjabi-Canada: By Anne Murphy 3. A(t) Home in the World: Refiguring (Indian) National Identity in a Global Era: By Rina Verma Williams 4. Imagining the Present and (re)presenting the Imaginary: Belonging and ‘homelessness’ among the Irish Diaspora in Belgium: By Sean O Dubhghaill