Conceptualizing the African Diaspora. Complications with time, space, class and gender

Abstract or Introduction

The term “Diaspora” simply means a dispersion of a people, language or culture that was formerly concentrated in one place. But adding “Africa” to the term makes it complicated and difficult to define because of the way the African diaspora occurred and controversies among scholars in defining who an African is. This complexity raises questions such as is an African solely a black person, or is it someone who traces his descent to the continent and the ultimate question of whether Africans see themselves as one people or align themselves to their respective ethnic groups and to some extent their countries.

The complications is further heightened by how various authors conceptualize the African Diaspora. The Atlantic model which dominates the African Diaspora popularized by Paul Gilroy tries to shift focus and attention on the forced migration of West Africans from 16th Century to the 19th Century as slaves to the new world. Scholars such as Zeleza therefore argues that there is the need to “de-Atlanticize and de-Americanize the histories of African diasporas” and identifies three main sets of African Diaspora namely the trans-Indian Ocean diasporas, trans-Mediterranean diasporas, and trans-Atlantic diasporas.

These sets of African Diaspora have their own histories and their differences and similarities between them making it more difficult to conceptualize the African Diaspora as referring to one event. This essay therefore seeks to explain how the complications in conceptualizing the African Diaspora stretches across time, space, class and gender.