For Creolization, Against Diaspora, Interlacing Both

This is a review and reflection on a conference volume comprising anglophone and francophone scholars writing on the uses and abuses of the terms creolization and diaspora. The volume also highlights new critiques and understandings of cosmopolitanism. While there is some discussion of one of the notable sites of creolization and diaspora, the Caribbean, a number of scholars advocate a switch of focus to the Indian Ocean. An important contribution is made by Lionnet who shows how the Indian Ocean is a paradigmatic case of multiple entanglements, plurality, and rhizomatic multidirectionality. This reviewer concurs in her view that Atlanticists have unfairly or unthinkingly sidelined the importance of cultural interactions in the Indian Ocean. Sinophone Studies are also represented through the work of Shu-mei Shih who advocates substituting Sinophone Studies for Diaspora Studies in the case of the Chinese. She is also unconvinced by discussions of deterritorialized transnational identities. Her views are explained and questioned by this reviewer. The editors of the volume are praised for creating a fruitful dialogue between fourteen contributors in the fields of comparative literature, socio-linguistics, and cultural sociology. In addition to diaspora, creolization, cosmopolitanism, and cultural complexity, other key themes drawn from the titles of chapters in the volume include reconciliation, representation, generation, memory, imaginings, exile, and masculinities.