Diaspora Transculturation Analysis

Diaspora (Gk. δια = apart; σπειρειν = scatter) is the generally violent and compulsory migration of peoples from their homeland to other regions. As a central event in colonization, the diaspora may involve millions of people who voluntarily displaced themselves from Europe and Asia to work chiefly in the United States, Canada, Africa, Australia and South America. It may also mean the enforced dislocation of millions of Amerindians and Africans, as slaves, to the plantations of Central and South America and the south of the United States. These two great areas, with their ever-increasing demand of labour, were developed as plantation colonies to furnish foodstuffs and raw material for the metropolitan populations. Actually, during more than three hundred years the economy of the Americas

Postcolonial theory has always insisted on the simultaneous fabrication of theOther and the other. Thus it is interesting to analyze the dynamics of the self-representation of the colonial subaltern and his/her resistance. Since cultural material is constantly transmitted by the dominant to colonized groups, the latter are independent to select, absorb and use some of it. Pratt raises some very important questions on transculturation. How are imperial representations received and appropriated by the periphery? How does transculturation occur from the periphery to the metropolis? How does the periphery determine the metropolis? Transculturation is a phenomenon of contact zones, or rather, “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of dominationand subordination - like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today” (Pratt, 1992, p. 4). It is therefore in contact zones that people who are geographically and