There's No Place Like Home: Discussing Diaspora

The definition of diaspora itself seems to have evolved throughout the years, first describing the situation of those forced out of their homeland, such as the Jewish people after their exile from Babylon. The definition has broadened and as discussed, today almost anyone can have a diaspora. Feeling excluded? Diaspora. Longing for home? Diaspora. What about people who long for diaspora, do they compose a diaspora as well?

In a globalized world, where we seek the local within the global and the global within the local, it seems like no one can shake their diasporic fever. But what are the symptoms?

In my opinion, diaspora is the offspring of the tumultuous relationship between nostalgia and sentimentality, as well as the younger sibling of the imagined community. At the end of her blog post, Kait asks “can diasporas really return to what they once knew?” Is it possible to “go home again?” In short, no, because whether diasporas idealize their homeland or not, they would be unable to return to it unchanged. This is because identity is continually evolving, both personal identity and the identity of a given locale. Diasporas are part of an imagined community, and because this “community” exists intangibly, it is impossible to ensure that it will remain unchanged. While diasporas seemingly cling to notions of community that do not really “exist”, at least according to theorists like Benedict Anderson, this does not mean that their feelings are not valid. As we have learned, ideology has material consequences which manifest themselves every day. Diasporas can never “really” go home again because said “home” does not really exist, but this doesn’t negate or devalue the longing for home. The question become, what does this thirst for home really represent and can it ever be quenched?

I would like to end this post with a quote from Rod Serling, creator and writer of the science fiction television series The Twilight Zone. In an episode titled “Walking Distance”, Serling explores the “longing for home” feeling felt by all, and concludes as we must that it is not possible to go back.

“Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice president in charge of media. Successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives – trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there’ll be an occasion – maybe a summer night sometime – when he’ll look up from what he’s doing and listen to the distant music of the calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of his past. And perhaps across his mind there’ll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he’ll smile then too because he’ll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghost that cross a man’s mind – that are part of the Twilight Zone.”