Paper short abstract:

to The affective power of transnational aesthetics, of the milieus imported and actively (re)created in exile through oratory, objects, foods, music, dance and drama, derives in this view not merely from a nostalgic desire to recapitulate or replicate a lost ambience. It emerges from dialogical forging, in the here and now, of shared canons of taste among diasporic producers and consumers who collectively define what makes for social distinction, who claim ownership over spaces and places, and who together recreate the pleasure of joint celebration and worship.

Paper long abstract:

My address draws on a special edited issue on the ‘Aesthetics of Diaspora’, to challenge the definition of aesthetics as merely ‘sensuous cognition’, (Wiseman 2008: 7). Instead, aesthetics is defined as ‘sensuous participation’ – the appreciation and making of beauty, distinction and sheer sensual pleasure as these come to be embedded and re-embedded in social worlds of literary, artistic, musical and performative celebration in diaspora. The affective power of transnational aesthetics, of the milieus imported and actively (re)created in exile through oratory, objects, foods, music, dance and drama, derives in this view not merely from a nostalgic desire to recapitulate or replicate a lost ambience. It emerges from dialogical forging, in the here and now, of shared canons of taste among diasporic producers and consumers who collectively define what makes for social distinction, who claim ownership over spaces and places, and who together recreate the pleasure of joint celebration and worship. This is equally true of the high cultural literary worlds of diasporic writers, I propose, as it is of the demotic worlds of labour migrants living on the margins of global cities.