Dialectics of diaspora and home: Indentureship, migration and Indo-Caribbean identity

The historical emergence of Indo-Caribbean identity as a diasporic cultural production is discussed in this thesis. In the first part, the concept of diaspora is theorized as a particular though currently popular style of cultural identification. The work of selected cultural theorists is critically reviewed in confronting the political implications of the use of the concept of diaspora. It is argued that diasporic identity is marked by the twin productions of diaspora and home and constituted through a both temporal and spatial sense of historical rupture, which is here termed a mo(ve)ment--a moment in time and a movement in space. The dialectical relationship between diaspora and home is discussed in attending to the tension between racialism and what is here termed territorialism in the current academic work on the invention of Africa. The centrality of diasporic experience in the invention of home is claimed in following the early activist career of Gandhi in South Africa where his political philosophy and thought on Indian nationalism was largely developed.; In the second part of the thesis, Indo-Caribbean identity is posited as doubly diasporic, based on the two mo(ve)ments of colonial indentureship and neocolonial migration. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...