In her contribution, Braziel resists Torres-Saillant's valorization of diaspora as the anti-dote to national paradigms. As an organizing rubric, “Caribbean diaspora” obscures nationality, class, race, gender, sexuality, and political economy as striating diasporas and diasporic communities; it ignores the fact that there is not one Caribbean diaspora but many. Diasporas are fractured landscapes: not only oppressed individuals but also corrupt presidents and even petty but violent Calibans are part of out-migratory waves that constitute diasporic formations abroad, or form the long-arm, transnational tentacles of the nation-state.
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Small Axe Incorporated
2008
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