Diaspora and Empire: Toward a New Synthesis?

Diasporas are usually minority social formations whose physical existence and cultures are often precarious. What would it mean to adapt diaspora theory to describe the culture of a majority population that had established itself in a new territory through an aggressive and continuing strategy of conquest and imperial expansion? Is it possible to think of the Anglo-Americans who parted company with the British Empire at the end of the eighteenth century and founded a new state as a diasporic population? In this essay, Leonard Tennenhouse's provocative new book, The Importance of Feeling English, is explored as nothing short of an attempt to recast the story of American literary history by reading it through the lens of diaspora theory. Important questions are raised not only about the literature of the early United States but also about the power, range, and limitations of diaspora theory. Tennenhouse is shown to offer a new model for thinking about the cultural situation of Anglo-Americans in the early Republic; despite some limitations, the concept of "diaspora" goes a long way toward establishing a basis for conceptualizing how post-imperial, former British subjects began to imagine themselves in national terms as Americans.