Victim of his success at university and his political recovery, the term “ diaspora » has gradually lost its power to explain social connection and distance together. In an imposing work, Stéphane Dufoix brilliantly suggests finding meaning in his wanderings through the centuries.
The Dispersion invites us on a long-term journey in the footsteps of the word “ diaspora », across the centuries but also geographical and linguistic eras. In this work, Stéphane Dufoix attempts to reconstruct the trajectory of a term invented in IIIe century BC by Greek translators of the Torah. So hypothetical divine punishment, “ diaspora » saw its semantic field expand as it crossed the centuries, until it became XXe century one ordinary condition » of modernity, allowing us to think together about social connection and distance. This ever-increasing elasticity of “ diaspora » is not unanimous, however, with some fearing that the term will end up losing its heuristic power. In “ The ‘diaspora’ diaspora », article published in 2005 in Ethnic and Racial StudiesRogers Brubaker thus asserted that “ the universalization of ‘diaspora’ meant, paradoxically, the disappearance of the diaspora. »
It’s hard not to see in the very title of La Dispersion an echo of Brubaker’s article. Dufoix nevertheless differs from the latter by his refusal to arrive at an operational definition of the term. In a previous work published in 2003, he already stated that he “ did (exist) no phenomenon which is the Diaspora independently of each particular case and independently of the use of the word ‘diaspora’ and its ‘correspondents’ in different languages “. In the same vein, the objective of this book is not to (re)find the “ TRUE » meaning of the word « diaspora » but to understand the conditions of dispersal resulting from multiple migrations. To do this, it is in the uses of the term more than in its formal definitions that Stéphane Dufoix is interested, seeking to identify the phases of crystallization of a new meaning and the reasons for their success (p. 30-31) .
Plea for a “ historical socio-semantics »
Because it postulates the inseparability of the meaning and the referent (p. 28) and, therefore, the “ formativity » of the discourse which creates the social reality that the term seems to describe (p. 29, p. 568), this approach based on uses allows Dufoix to free himself from the controversies relating to the proliferation of “ diaspora » like the definitional disputes that surround it.
While he does not ignore these debates, he does not seek to determine who is right or wrong. What is important is above all to understand why and how the different uses of “ diaspora », whose applicability is now almost unlimited. To do this, Dufoix pays particular attention to the historical conditions of possibility (but also impossibility) of emergence and/or transmission of these uses. It thus avoids the pitfall of “ catalog » and demonstrates, in a rather convincing manner, that the success of “ diaspora » is intrinsically linked to the way in which dispersion is socially perceived. Also the work is full of long developments devoted to terms other than “ diaspora » (galouth, tsouftsothdisperse, expatriate, scatteringetc.): they have in common that, through the centuries and languages, they have conveyed the idea of dispersion and allow us to better understand the positive or negative charge associated with it.
In this perspective, “ diaspora » then shapes reality as much as it depicts it: to say is to make exist, and, depending on the times and contexts, it is to exclude or include. Dufoix rightly shows this with regard to the two great historical experiences of dispersion, the “ models » Jewish and black, to which he devotes his first two parts. But it is perhaps even more significant in the third part, in which he questions the growing enthusiasm aroused by “ diaspora » since the 1990s. Elevated to the rank of “ blessing » for States in a globalized world, “ diaspora » has in some way become a political imperative at the origin of new state and international practices and strategies, which converge towards the ultra-territorialization of nations.
This attention paid to both the conditions of possibility of the uses of “ diaspora » than their ability to produce an object that they claim to describe made of The Dispersion a resolutely innovative work on an epistemological level. By encouraging us to seek the meaning of words in their wanderings rather than in etymology, The Dispersion opens the way to a historical socio-semantics » and therefore has a programmatic character.
Located at the intersection of several disciplinary fields (sociology, history, semantics) and seeking to embrace all uses (religious, activist, academic, administrative or journalistic, ancient or contemporary) of a particularly polysemous word, Stéphane’s investigation Dufoix displays a doubly synthetic ambition. The result is an impressive abundance of examples and references which sometimes risks disorienting the reader. It is difficult, however, to hold this against the author, since it is precisely this ability to summon and examine sources as diverse as they are varied which allows him to carry out this dynamic mapping of the diffusion of “ diaspora » and the semantic dispersion that accompanies it. While providing undoubtedly the most complete inventory of the uses of “ diaspora “, the genealogy thus unfolded turns out to be solid and particularly convincing, despite the imprecisions or approximations that a specialist in a given discipline or period may note, and for which the author apologizes in advance, aware of the necessary incompleteness of such a colossal investigation (p. 567).
Two conceptual trajectories, three diffusion logics
If “ diaspora » has crossed the centuries, enriched over time with new meanings, the author renounces making a strictly chronological account of this story. Rather, he strives to account for “ the logic of deployment of the uses of the term » (p. 34). This is the real backbone of the work. The first part is devoted to the establishment of a territorial-centric meaning of “ diaspora », based on the slow conceptualization of the Jewish experience. Dufoix first sets out to identify the origins of the word, deconstructing in the process a certain number of commonly accepted theses: that which associates “ diaspora » to Greek colonization such as that which makes it a translation of galouth. He thus analyzes the appearance of the term in the Septuagint then the conditions of its virtual disappearance from Ve century in XVIIIefollowing the Judeo-Christian controversy. We then follow the broadcast of “ diaspora » in the religious space, as a theological concept, and according to a logic of singularization which results in the coexistence of three versions (Jewish, Catholic, Protestant). Passed into vernacular languages XIXe century, the term becomes secularized then becomes commonplace from the XXe century, gradually investing in several disciplines without any real conceptualization before the 1970s. This is where the first efforts in this direction emerged ; they are led by political scientists, in connection with the theory of nationalism, and with reference to Jewish history.
Dufoix then focuses on the establishment of a perfectly antagonistic meaning of “ diaspora », based on the black/African experience (doublet used purposely by Dufoix for “ point out the existence of a historical tension between these two terms within the discourses aimed at defining both the identity of the descendants of slaves and the problematic unity of the African continent », p. 212, note 6). This conceptual series was established from the 1950s/1960s and allows “ diaspora » to decenter oneself from the Jewish experience. Dufoix shows, however, that even before the resumption of the term, the experience of black dispersion is understood in terms of the Jewish experience, essentially by analogy. “ Diaspora » established itself from the 1950s, at the time of African independence, in Africanist intellectual and activist circles, from an essentially Afro-centrist perspective. The incorporation of the term into the lexicon of the black American cause in the 1960s allowed it to be enriched with a community and cultural dimension and to emphasize the specificity of the black experience. Against a backdrop of post-structuralism and criticism of essentialism, and thanks to the Caribbean migratory experience in England, the Afrocentric vision was finally called into question in the 1990s, giving rise to a decentered meaning of the word “ diaspora “.
Dufoix thus shows two complex conceptual trajectories, made of successive appropriations and reinterpretations, according to a logic not of replacement but of stratification (p. 40). But he also strives to remove from the simple label diaspora part of the unifying power which is often that of its uses » (p. 380) by reporting on “ different forms of economy of the relationship to space and time » (p. 380) which could have played out for each of these historical experiences of dispersion. He identifies four possible configurations, distinguishing conceptions based on exile (which can be considered according to an eschatological or historical horizon) from those based on the link (whether of a centro-peripheral or trans-state nature). The Dispersion thus reveals, and this is one of the great strengths of the work, homologies between Jewish and black/African visions of the diaspora, while highlighting the autonomous development of each of these two conceptual series.
Finally, it shows that it is thanks to globalization and the interest aroused in the academic world in the subsequent recomposition of the relationship to dispersion and territory that the intersection of these two series occurred in the 1990s. previously parallel trajectories. This is the origin of the third “ deployment logic ” of “ diaspora », to which he devotes the last part of his work, striving to analyze the new contemporaneity of the term, both witness and catalyst of a world in the process of globalization. Having become a field of study in its own right, “ diaspora » spreads well beyond the academic world. As it becomes established, and despite the criticism that its proliferation arouses, the term becomes more complex and enriched with a middle meaning, where the community based on origin no longer implies the expectation of ‘a return. It is in this form, the author explains, that the diaspora becomes a blessing for nations, then invited to reconfigure themselves beyond the territory and the State by implementing public policies of identification and inclusion of their diasporas.
By undertaking the study of the dispersion of “ diaspora », Stéphane Dufoix took the risk of dispersion, as he himself confesses in a remarkably humble conclusion. By delivering one of undoubtedly the most complete summaries of the notion of diaspora, he achieves a real tour de force here. A history of the uses of the word, The Dispersion is at least as much a geography and a sociology. This is what makes the work so stimulating, both through the contribution it makes to the field of diasporic studies and through the reflection it opens up on the meaning of words.