Towards African Diaspora Citizenship

Politicizing an Existing Global Geography

From: Black Geographies

$3.20

The African diaspora is in effect an already existing globalization of African peoples, but it preceded the economic and communications structures now defined as globalization. To institutionalize the geopolitical reality of this diaspora, we still have to develop usable approaches for questioning and transcending the limitations of particular geographies, nation-state boundaries, and ethnic and linguistic differences. This politicization of diaspora citizenship would put into practice a central intent of pan-Africanist thinkers, which is to create an international network of ideas and practices that can then be positioned as a usable political body for the benefit of common yet separate and dispersed communities.

View

Contributors

Carole Boyce Davies

Carole Boyce Davies is Professor of English and African–New World Studies at Florida International University, Miami. She is the author of Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994) and Claudia Jones . . . Left of Karl Marx: The Politics and Poetics of a Black Communist Woman (2007). Other publications include Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (1986), Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature (1990), Moving Beyond Boundaries (1995), The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (1999), and Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (2003). She is general editor of The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (2007).

Babacar M'Bow

Babacar M'Bow is International Program and Exhibit Coordinator at Broward County Libraries Division, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and focuses on cultural studies with an emphasis on Africa and African diaspora arts. His publications include Splendors of Trinidad and Tobago: The Art of Carnival (2000), Haiti: From a Legacy of Freedom to an Explosion of Cultures (2001), The Soul of Black Folk: Africa and the African Diaspora (2003), The Descent of the Lwa: Journey through Haitian Mythology (2004), Benin: A Kingdom in Bronze (2005), and Roots: The Idea of Modernity in Contemporary Haitian Art.