Context
The last four months, amid global turmoil and regional devastation, I have been striving to continue my critical work on diaspora, in a project taking up the construction of “Global Hellenism.” I would have never advanced this work without the benefit of pioneering research achieved by scholars from the previous generation but also my contemporaries. Feeling a sense of gratitude and intellectual debt, my thoughts also veered toward the next generation in the context of the current state of the field of diaspora studies, still short of human and institutional resources. I felt compelled to share the following, initially intended as a conclusion to my writing (still in progress) with the community of modern Greek studies scholars and the broader public.
The Text
As I move toward concluding this writing, I think about the question of the next generation of modern Greek transnational/diaspora scholars. I recall the intellectual resources my generation inherited but also the challenges it confronted. I feel immensely grateful to those intellectual ancestors who produced quality scholarship, boldly taking risks to challenge canonical renderings of diaspora and "Hellenism," opening new routes for critical inquiry, raising the bar while freeing us to explore new research questions.
But I also remember, so viscerally, the embodied frustration about the vast knowledge gaps in the field due to the limited human resources and institutional power. As a result, a great deal of labor was necessary––excavating tunnel after tunnel it was exhausting––to be able to cross into new research frontiers.
The wide circulation of narrow and essentialist identity narratives in the public sphere also presented an impediment for advancing the field. Those of us working against this reductive cultural politics had to invest vast energies in demonstrating the self-evident reality of the diaspora as a heterogeneous field. It involved practicing scholarship as intervention, calling for inclusion of subjectivities, histories, and experiences not fitting normative simplifications. This critical work was urgent, we felt, to engage students, scholars of diasporas; also the public, community institutions. But in a weak and reticent diasporic public sphere this latter enterprise faced difficulties.
Though nation-centric narratives of diaspora still reign supreme in state and popular discourse, the critical corpus above was successful in carving alternative academic and public spaces for thinking and writing diaspora. Sectors in the academy cultivated it, graduate students were exposed to new ideas, a range of academic and popular journals were receptive. Though commanding a relative limited academic space, critical diaspora studies were effective in moving the conversation toward regional particularities, class and gender-specificities, silenced pasts, the making of bicultural selves, issues of ethnics and politics in cultural representation, transnational inquiries, diasporic citizenship, diaspora solidarities with vulnerable groups. There were significant gains, but a great deal of work remains to be done. Not everyone found critical self-reflection a compelling practice.
The next generation enters this field inheriting a significant corpus of work, but also still confronting major lacunas in knowledge. They do so while entering a market of limited academic opportunities in Greek diaspora studies at a time when critical scholarship finds itself under duress. The global tendencies of governments to tightly regulate multiculturalism and the simultaneous ascendancy of national historiographies and popular celebrations of heritage makes critical scholarship at best unpopular at worse undesirable and target of nationalist critique. Junior scholars embracing post-colonial projects are chastised in public as unpatriotic. Funding for such scholarship may be limited, magnifying opportunities for those who safely pursue complacent research. Once again, the next generation is confronted with cultural fronts which we thought, until recently, that we left behind. We now return to the struggle for asserting the value of diverse historiographies.
Greek diaspora studies carry limited academic capital and operate with limited human and financial resources. The Greek state and community organizations invest a great deal in promoting their own identity narratives but not in advancing a multifaceted public conversation by empowering reflective academic studies. In the diaspora governmental economy of positing diasporas as global players in advancing national interests, enhancing cultural prestige and status, knowledge production is hierarchical. Projects reflecting on improving “diaspora homeland” relations enjoy support by state and financial institutions vested in this relationship. Research that places limits in its critique of institutions enjoys great visibility while work interrogating dominant ideologies is still sidelined. This while spaces of critical freedom seem to be shrinking.
In the current global dynamic, under dramatic changes whose implications are difficult to foresee, diasporas serve as tools for states, elites, and institutions to advance their political, economic and national interests. Identity narratives privilege certain modalities of practices––investments, political support, philanthropy, transfers of professional expertise, cultural preservation, empowering local institutions––while displacing others. Questions regarding poverty in the diaspora, struggles for coping with soaring real estate prices, inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic exploitation fall outside the purview of this discourse. Scholars face the task of addressing these issues. But how to advance this remapping when academic positions are scarce and globalization contributes to the proliferation of new collectives, initiatives, institutions, cultural expressions, discourses. Diaspora studies lack adequate resources to meaningfully keep pace with these new articulations.
What is it to be done? There are no easy answers. In this juncture, we will do well to once again remind ourselves that modern Greek studies *is* transnational modern Greek studies. Let us also note that questions of globality intensify and expand the scope of this field where diaspora studies indeed cross paths with modern Greek studies, a potentially powerful academic partner (in the context of a historically uneasy relationship). Scholars may wish to consider position papers and essays as ways of contributing, though this practice does not often translate into academic credentials. Tenured scholars are best positioned pragmatically for this kind of tactical interventions. We may wish to think of edited volumes on diasporic literature, archives, popular culture, civic activism, solidarities with persecuted or devalued demographics, the arts. Anthologies of poetry and short stories. Enter in dialogue with think tanks and journalists. One major fight is for continuing critical scholarship producing knowledge raising questions, generating debate. Let us keep reflecting on what we could further deliver to the field and offer to the next generation…
Yiorgos Anagnostou
July 4, 2025
