Diasporas of Mind, Or Why There Aint No Black Atlantic in Cultural China

Abstract

The concept of cultural China, which has attempted to champion diasporic values in the construction of new Chinese identities, resembles the cosmopolitanism of Black Atlantic, which has become Paul Gilroy's paradigm of counter-modernity, both through its appeal to hybridity and the emancipatory power of culture. Despite superficial similarities between these two concepts, the utility of diaspora here resides less in its ability to invoke ethnic realities than its particular situatedness within a field of socio-political relations. On the one hand, while Chinese, black and other diasporas differ by reference to their situatedness to a local socio-political ground, they expose on the other hand the general limitations of diaspora as a phenomenon engendered by the rigid peculiarities of an increasingly anachronistic stratified society.

Keywords:

• Chinese Diaspora
• Transnationalism
• Paul Gilroy
• Hybridity