Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora (review)

Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora. Edited by DARLENE CLARK HINE and JACQUELINE MCLEOD. Blacks in Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Map. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxv, 491 pp. Cloth, $29.95.

As stated in the title, the book's goal is to illustrate diaspora experiences of African peoples in a comparative framework, that is, to present "Atlantic history within a black cultural context" (p. xix). Diaspora is understood as a paradigm of empowerment and as an analytical tool to underline the "international dimensions, commonalities, and discontinuities in the histories of communities of color." It is another valuable publication from the Comparative Black History doctoral program at Michigan State University, incorporating the work of junior and senior researchers in a field that has grown immensely over the past decades (for example, see the bibliography compiled by Erik Hofstee, pp. 419-69).

Divided into four sections (comparative diaspora historiography; identity and culture; domination and resistance in the New World; and society and power in the Atlantic world), this collection approaches the concept of diaspora from very different angles. Differences in the definitions and accents posed by diasporian studies show some discrepancies among the authors. These are born out of the diaspora idea, and more generally, the tension inherent to comparative studies: the tension between historical context and the aspects that are (and need to be) selected (and thus isolated) for comparative purposes. In addition, the authors also diverge on whether to emphasize commonalities or differences, and on the types of explanations they employ.

Different accents are contained in the propositions of Earl Lewis (pp. 3-36), Thomas C. Holt (pp. 33-44), Dwayne E. Williams (pp. 105-20), Jack P. Greene (pp. 343-66), and Elliott P. Skinner (pp. 45-70). Lewis envisions overlapping diasporas in which the process of identity formation is derived from historical actors' multipositional experiences. This idea of interconnectedness with other diasporas tends to dilute the African-centered diaspora idea. Historical process is perceived as the cumulative result from successive diaspora experiences of people from various and changing backgrounds. In Earl's reading, diaspora becomes the way of researching and understanding human interaction. In Holt's account the black diaspora was at one point in time key to the emergence of the modern world but other developments followed from it, and he posits the need to ground the black diaspora within the confines of "global social processes rooted in the expansion of capitalism" (p. 43). Williams recognizes the need to include "difference" in the diaspora analysis to circumvent racial essentialism; according to him, identity is imposed from without and shaped from within, a dialectical process by which "uniqueness" rather than commonality is forged, especially if the accent is "within." He chooses a unique community, namely, Portuguese Cape Verdeans in the United States between 1878 and 1921, to illustrate his point. Greene's article, on the other hand, questions whether terms such as "diaspora," "encounter," or "contact" suffice to understand the "competitive and ongoing social interplay" (p. 336), but concedes that the Atlantic and the diaspora paradigms help dismantle the nation-state paradigm. Atlantic history becomes more than a transoceanic framework; it becomes the "landscape in which contemporary regional and cultural similarities, not ultimate membership in some as-yet-uncreated national state would provide the principal criteria of organization" (p. 337).

While the contributions of Earl, Holt, Williams, and Greene de-emphasize the all-encompassing analytical value of black diaspora and its solely "Atlantic connection," Elliott P. Skinner (pp. 45-70), invites us to detect an African-centered paradigm based on people's experiences, to retrieve African culture traits by showing their persistence. Experiences and persistence are then read as a succession of "invented traditions" (from "black nationality" and negritude to Kwanza) within a universal civilization with pluralistic paradigms. With propositions as different as "capitalist determination" or "cultural retrieval," the arguments revolve around persistence and diversification, uniqueness and universality...