Desperately Seeking an Identity

Abstract

Not all constructions of home in the diaspora produce virulent forms of patriotism. Visual culture offers diasporic populations the opportunity to enable an identification with the homeland that emphasizes shared affiliations and identifications. Tapping into the warehouse of images offered by western and non-western popular culture, the diasporic imaginary builds a transnational community of sentiment forged through kinship networks and affective ties. Specifically, the article argues that these narratives deploy a diasporic optic, a sideways glance that looks constantly at two or more worlds and moves in different directions at once. The diasporic optic offers the possibility of negotiating identities across differences through the use of media images.