Page 81 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

DIEGESIS

from their homeland – as political migrants, economic migrants in
search of work or refugees escaping war. The experience of exile may
be accompanied by a sense of belonging to the former homeland and a
continued allegiance to that remembered culture within a host
country. For some communities, such as the Iranian community in Los
Angeles or the Vietnamese in Melbourne, the homeland is a denied
concept owing to its occupation by a regime of which they are not
part (Cunningham, 2000). Diasporas are therefore heterogeneous
cultures, spatially separated from their place of origin yet living
between places in their identity and cultural life. The psychological
and cultural experience of diaspora can be one of hybridity, exile,
nostalgia, selective adaptation or cultural invention.
The term is useful for moving beyond conceptions of ethnicity that
depict unitary notions of culture contained within national borders.
Diasporas present a complex picture of ethnic identity, whereby
groups participate in activities that maintain aspects of their homeland
within the host country while at the same time participate in the
lifestyle and culture of their newhome. The experience of diaspora is
one of group memory, a desire to preserve and carry the languages,
tastes, dress and rituals of home within a new temporary or permanent
space. It is therefore a notion of ethnicity that involves the movement
of people, and cultures. It is not only a ‘looking back’ to the past, but
the making of newcommunities and the transformation of traditions,
neighbourhoods and cultures.
Only some migrant groups attract the term. There is said to be a
Chinese diaspora, throughout the world, but not a British one: Brits
are called ‘expats’. There is a Vietnamese diaspora, but not a Serbian
one among ethnic Serb communities throughout the Balkans and
elsewhere. It seems that ‘diaspora’ applies to migrants whose dispersal
has occurred under some sort of duress, whether military-political or
economic. There is no American diaspora, for instance.
See also: Ethnic/ethnicity

Further reading: Cohen (1997); Cunningham (2000); Mirzoeff (2000); Naficy
(1993); Sreberny (2000)

DIEGESIS

A term used traditionally to describe the total world of a narrative.
Aristotle used it to describe howliterature was a process of telling a
story that did not involve showing it. The ideal was to tell a story so

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