The African Diaspora and the Disciplines

Introduction

Introduction Tejumola Olaniyan and James H. Sweet The African diaspora has become a most vibrant area of research and teaching interest across the disciplines in the past two decades in the American academy. The larger context of this boom is the rise of varieties of minority, postcolonial, transnational, and migration studies. Institutional units or subunits dedicated to African Diaspora Studies have multiplied across universities, and scholarly books, journals, special issues of journals, and articles continue to be published on the topic.1 Much of the scholarship is devoted to the primary work of excavation, interpretation , and analysis. Within those frames, we can affirm that the yield of insight so far has been truly substantial. There is a glaring lack, however , in our existing body of conceptual and definitional knowledge. Most scholars of African Diaspora Studies have been trained in one particular discipline, but the area of study to which they are such committed champions is evidently vaster than particular disciplinary boundaries. African Diaspora Studies, in its most robust and enabling conception, covers the African world comprehensively conceived: Africa and its diaspora populations wherever we find them, from all disciplinary perspectives. It is obviously a tall order, if not impossible, for one scholar to master the protocols of more than a few disciplines. So how does one, solidly based in a discipline as is still the hegemonic norm, practice African Diaspora Studies, an inherently interdisciplinary enterprise?2 The current ebullience of the field notwithstanding, there is a deafening silence on this crucial matter. Little effort has been made to clearly situate, delineate, and reflect on the practice of diaspora scholarship within the possibilities and constraints simultaneously afforded and imposed by the disciplines. Interdisciplinary dialogue on the theoretical contours of the African diaspora is even rarer. By identifying and speaking of this lack in the field, we are calling neither for encyclopedic knowledge of the disciplines nor for the abandonment of rigorous disciplinary training and specialization as a condition for African diaspora scholarship. On the contrary, our goal in this volume is more modest but potentially widely transforming and transformative: 1 2 Tejumola Olaniyan and James H. Sweet to begin a serious conversation on the intersections of African Diaspora Studies and the disciplines. The central goal of the book is twofold: (1) to theorize and define methods, problems, and conflicts of “doing” African diaspora research and scholarship from various disciplinary perspectives, and (2) to initiate and facilitate interdisciplinary and cross-­ regional dialogues and debates on African Diaspora Studies. We aim to illuminate the ways that the African diaspora is understood, produced as an object of study, enabled, and constrained in and by the various disciplines. Rather than an emphasis on primary research and analysis, we tasked our authors with the appropriately self-­ reflexive and challenging meta-­ level scrutiny of the practice of African Diaspora Studies within and at the interstices of disciplines. Here then are some of the specific foundational questions we posed to the authors: 1. Is the African diaspora seen as a discrete field within your discipline? If so, how is it distinguished from other fields like African American Studies, Migration Studies, etc.? In short, how does your discipline define the African diaspora? 2. What are the major methodological conventions of your discipline, particularly as they relate to the African diaspora? Are these methodologi­ cal conventions consistent across fields in your discipline, or does the study of the African diaspora require different kinds of approaches/ questions? 3. Are there conflicting approaches to African Diaspora Studies within your discipline? Does the diaspora include Africa, or does it include secondary migrations like those from Brazil to Nigeria, or Jamaica to England or Canada? Are there any theoretical/methodological tensions between those who study earlier streams of the diaspora (like those associated with the Atlantic slave trade) and those who study more recent streams (like those of contemporary African migrants to the United States)? 4. What is the relationship of your discipline to other disciplines as it relates to the study of the African diaspora? Does your discipline draw heavily from the approaches and methodologies of other disciplines? Is your discipline in conflict with another discipline over approaches to diaspora? 5. Has the practice of African Diaspora Studies impacted your discipline in any way? What are the constraints and possibilities of doing African diaspora in your discipline? In addition to the broad questions outlined above, we also gave contributors the freedom to address more specific issues that are germane to their particular disciplines...