Virtual diasporas and the dilemma of multiple belongings in cyberspace
Access Status
Authors
Date
2009Type
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Source Title
Additional URLs
Remarks
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives 3.0 Australia http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/au/
Collection
Abstract
In this paper, I outline the dilemma that confronts those who participate in multiple belongings in cyberspace via virtual diasporas. I suggest that it springs from a mismatch between how diasporic belonging is understood and how it is practised online as well as the consequences that follow on from virtual enactments of diaspora. By extending Lefebvre’s notion of the lived and utilising an understanding of online participation as deeply individuated, I argue that the nation is embodied in each instance through the social constitution of the abstract notions by which it is conceived and the practices by which it is perceived. As such, although the nation is conceived and constructed in imagination, being part of a nation is an excluding, bounded affair that does not easily permit more than one process. And while the Internet might allow its users to experience multiple belongings, they are of the impoverished, malnourished kind. In diasporic virtual communities, the restless and singular technology of the Internet has been utilised to promote and extend the paradox of multiple belongings based on exclusionary, essential ties. This, I contend, is the dilemma that virtual diasporas pose for national belonging.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Leong, Susan (2015)The objective of this article is to flesh out the theoretical framework of franchise nation first broached in 2009 as a means of understanding the three intersecting relationships between home nation and diaspora, host ...
-
Leong, Susan (2015)The objective of this article is to flesh out the theoretical framework of franchise nation first broached in 2009 as a means of understanding the three intersecting relationships between home nation and diaspora, host ...
-
Dougal, Josephine Kathleen (2010)This study arose out of an interest in my own family’s Scottish song traditions and a desire to understand them within a wider cultural context. Its purpose is to create a critical account of music and migrant identity ...