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RECONCEPTUALIZING AFRICAN DIASPORAS: NOTES FROM A HISTORIAN
Author(s) -
ZELEZA PAUL TIYAMBE
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
transforming anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.325
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 1548-7466
pISSN - 1051-0559
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-7466.2010.01073.x
Subject(s) - diaspora , scholarship , historiography , scope (computer science) , subject (documents) , african studies , history of africa , anthropology , out of africa , sociology , political science , history , gender studies , ethnology , law , library science , computer science , programming language
This commentary interrogates Clarke's paper on African diasporas. It argues that though Clarke seeks to open new analytical lenses on African diasporas by focusing on postslavery African diasporas, it does not advance the scholarship on the subject because of its limited conceptions of Africa and the global dimensions of African diasporas. As is common in Eurocentric African studies, “Africa” is seen as coterminous with sub‐Saharan Africa, and Clarke universalizes the histories of Afro‐Atlantic diaspora to the histories of Afro‐European and Afro‐Asian diasporas. Her notion of humanitarian diasporas also limits the scope of the engagements between Africa and its diasporas. My commentary tries to offer an alternative historiography of the global dimensions of African diasporas.