This is the first book to examine the connections between diaspora - the movement, whether forced or voluntary, of a nation or group of people from one homeland to another - and its representations in visual culture. Two foundational articles by Stuart Hall and the painter R.B. Kitaj provide points of departure for an exploration of the meanings of diaspora for cultural identity and artistic practice.
A distinguished group of contributors, who include Alan Sinfield, Irit Rogoff, and Eunice Lipton, address the rich complexity of diasporic cultures and art, but with a focus on the visual culture of the Jewish and African diasporas. Individual articles address the Jewish diaspora and visual culture from the 19th century to the present, and work by African American and Afro-Brazilian artists.
Diaspora and Visual Culture marks the new importance of diaspora as a means of understanding the new modes of postnational identity. In examining the visual culture of the "classic" African and Jewish diasporas, contributors address different aspects of the multiple viewpoints inherent in diasporic cultures. Two key introductory essays by Stuart Hall and the painter R.B. Kitaj highlight the intersections of diaspora and cultural identity. The subsequent essays examine individual instances of diaspora as diverse as homosexuality in the Dreyfus Affair, the Caribbean-Jewish Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, Yoruba diaspora art and performance in Brazil and New York, identity in the art of African-American women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the formation of American, European and Israeli artistic identity and the possibility that queer culture is diasporic. Aline Brandauer, Paula Birnbaum, Henry J. Drewal, Margaret Thompson Drewal, Stuart Hall, Juanita Marie Holland, R.B. Kitaj, Norman kleeblatt, Eunice Lipton, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Moyo Okediji, Simone Ost