Who Speaks for the Diaspora?

With the increasing governmental value of the diasporas (particularly the wealthy ones) we are seeing the expansion of a managerial class in the media, heritage organizations, institutions, the cultural service sector as well as the academy who have limited understanding of the histories and the complexities of the phenomenon but know enough (and also are adept at rehashing nation-centric ideologies) or will be producing enough to reproduce regulated meanings of the diaspora and in the process shrink the (already small) demographic who does the critical work of naming these phenomena and their connection with neoliberalism and the ruling of the dominant classes.

A note about academic diaspora studies and their public role

In the absence of relevant studies, we can only speculate about the reasons for the lack, or at best limited, institutional interest in supporting Greek diaspora studies.

 
But we can very well see the implications of this neglect, particularly in this historical moment when grassroots interest in heritage and identity accelerates. With limited human and other resources there is little what researchers can do, while some opt to strictly stay within the niche of their research interests. As a result, academic contributions for understanding and contextualizing grassroots identity narratives is limited, and in some areas non-existent.

 
To speak about a topic which is close to my heart and politics, understanding women’s struggles for equality. In the context of this year’s International Women’s Day, diaspora associations mobilized widely, paying tribute to diaspora women, recognizing their contributions, honoring trailblazers, granting awards––under the rubric of promoting the discourse of equality.

I have not fully followed the discourse, and I do not think there is yet academic essays or commentaries contextualizing its various iterations. I hope I am mistaken. Perhaps there will be in the future. But Greek diaspora gender studies has also few practitioners.

 
I would have loved to hear how these grassroots celebrations of women addressed working class women. Whether the discussion included various feminisms and intersections between gender, class, sexuality. Whether there were discussions of how the struggle for equality squares with the social organization of associations which still segregate gender. Whether there were expressions of solidarity with vulnerable women in demographics beyond the Greek diaspora, in the spirit of an outward ethos of diasporic citizenship.

The lack of support for diaspora studies has considerably compromised its contributions to the public sphere, to the detriment, I believe, to all diaspora citizens as well as those in Greece who value reflection and learning.

A broad conversation is due about our presence in the public sphere and the forms it might take.

Note on Entrepreneurialism

Entrepreneurialism is valorized as a driving force for innovation, creativity, progress, success. It is cited to foreground the willingness to take risks, the ability to think and act outside the box, to the crossing, that is, of all kinds of boundaries, leading to new solutions and technologies, discoveries, medical breakthroughs, ultimately human well-being. Entrepreneurialism is of course ideologically loaded. In immigrant/ethnic discourses, where it is celebrated, it has provided ahistorical explanations of mobility, justification for intra-ethnic (as well as interethnic) hierarchies (successful vs unsuccessful migrant) and the arrogance that comes with them, national mythologies (bootstrap mobility), attacks on labor movements (the entrepreneurial middle class seeking to discipline immigrants involved in the labor movement, fearing the tarnishing of the ethnic reputation and the capitalist status quo). Entrepreneurialism creates but also destroys (social relations, the environment, values). Not rarely it connects with shady dealings behind sealed doors.

 
This is to say that the media, journalists, scholars, citizens ought to move beyond the ideology of entrepreneurialism as unbounded optimism––the sky is the limit––and explore the various facets of its social implications.

Collected Writings (in blogs and the media) on Greek American history and historiography

I have now collected my writings in my blog and the media (2007-2024)
on the subject of Greek American history and historiography (36918 words) ––

https://www.academia.edu/127422937/Greek_America_History_Historiography 

[see Table of Contents below]

Greek America
History and Historiography
Writings in Blogs and the Media
(2007-2024)
Yiorgos Anagnostou ©

The writings in this collection sprang from several intertwined desires, intellectual and affective. Deep feeling, while thinking about or experiencing particular Greek American realities, was one driving force. Another was the need to keep public memory alive about events not recognized as broadly as their significance requires. Also at work was an aspect of the research process––presenting knowledge left out from publication in the interest of space. Occasionally, a piece derived from research undertaken for work on a peer-reviewed project. This found its way into my blogs, which explains the long, article-like feel of some of the entries. In a few cases, let me note, I incorporated sections of my academic publications into blogs in my wish to bring the research closer to the broader public.

This collection documents an aspect of my writing life amidst major writing commitments––articles, book chapters, essays, editorials, book reviews, poems as well as blogs published in Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters, which are not included in this corpus.

Several of the writings featured here were meant as interventions in unfolding public conversations, produced in circumstances associated with intense, often overwhelming, work schedules. This urgency compromised, to some extent, the depth and range of my thinking as well as the degree of narrative expressiveness necessary for evoking complexity. This has been a relative drawback, but a price I was willing to pay in exchange for my intellectual contribution on issues that mattered to me.

The bulk of the writings were initially published in my blog Immigrations–Ethnicities–Racial Situations: Writings about Difference and Contact Zones (I-E-RS) (https://immigrations-ethnicities-racial.blogspot.com/), a venue which was founded in 2010. Some comprise book reviews and essays published in the media––Greek and Greek American mostly; I also include a Greek Australian example.
I would like to take the opportunity and express my debt to Kostis Kourelis given that my venturing into blogging was greatly inspired by his Objects-Buildings-Situations (https://kourelis.blogspot.com/), an initiative I admired for its eloquence and substance. The term “situations,” a borrowing in the title of I-E-RS, speaks to this affinity.

In I-E-RS, readers will also find entries pertaining to popular culture, including film, literature, Greek American studies, the politics of diaspora. I plan to compile and make this facet of my work available later in 2025.

Table of Contents

The Helen Zeese Papanikolas Papers (1954-2009):
Entering a Greek/American Archive

Why Support Greek American Archives? [Greek Cultural Resources, Meletios Pouliopoulos]

Making the Archive, Animating It

Our Responsibility in Representing Greek American History and Why it Matters
[African Americans and Greek Americans]

Immigrant Adaptations: Reflections

Greek Americans and African Americans in Conflict and Solidarity
[Review of George Pelecanos’ The Turnaround]

Explaining Immigrant Mobility: Do not Neglect the Race Factor 

[Review of Larry Odzak's Demetrios is Now Jimmy: Greek Immigrants in the Southern United States, 1895-1965].

Intra-Greek Conflicts in New York City

Migrant Letters as Agents for Rethinking Greek Migrant Historiography?

“When Greeks and Turks Met”: Cultures in Dialogue, Nationalisms in Conflict 

[Review of Demetra Vaka's The Unveiled Ladies of Istanbul (Stamboul)]

Empowering Greek American Women
[Review of Constance Callinicos’ American Aphrodite: Growing Up Female in Greek America]

Women in early Greek America – Ελληνοαμερικανίδες:
Μεταξύ Παράδοσης και Νεωτερικότητας

Immigrant Women’s Culture and the Ethic of Empathy
[Helen Papanikolas]

The Journeys of an Immigrant Woman: A Quest for Home
[Helen Papanikolas]

Greek American Histories, Popular and Scholarly

Migrant Spaces Encounters: Autobiographical, Introduction

Migrant Spaces Encounters: Reading Aspects of Greek Migrant History_A Structure of Feeling
[Helen Papanikolas]

Lindsay Hand's Paintings _ “Remembering the Ludlow Massacre” (2014)

Revisiting Ludlow: Its Enduring Legacy

Louis Tikas: Cretan and Greek Identities in Poetry and History

On the Causes of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster (1924): Human Life, Science, Government, Industrial Capitalism, and the Law

The Responsibility of Remembering the Castle Gate Mine Disaster (1924)

Το Χρέος της Μνήμης
[Τhe Castle Gate Mine Disaster]

Ελληνική Κοινότητα Μελβούρνης: Αγώνας για Ιδεολογική Επικράτηση––Ανταγωνισμός μεταξύ Κοσμικής και Θρησκευτικής Προσέγγισης
[Βιβλιοκριτική του «Σάρκα και Οστά της Μακρινής Πατρίδας: Η ιστορία της Ελληνικής Ορθόδοξης Κοινότητας Μελβούρνης και Βικτώριας από την ίδρυσή της μέχρι το 1972» (Γεωργία Χαρπαντίδου)]

Η Αμερική ως Κάτοπτρο
[Βιβλιοκριτική του «Το όραμα των Ελλήνων για τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Αμερικής: Από την Ελληνική Επανάσταση έως τον Πρώτο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο» (Κωνσταντίνος Διώγος)]

A Posthumous Letter to Dan Georgakas

February 1, 2025

Yiorgos Anagnostou
Ohio State University

Facebook’s praise culture

Witnessing the super applause at play, thunderous clapping elevating average value at a triumphant pedestal; showering with petals the illusion of super achievement.

 
Thinking how deeply damaging this is for a cultural field, an academic project. Cheers from a variety of angles working in tandem to blanket weak assumptions, blind spots, limitations. The weight of interests lowering expectations, compromising critical reflection, crashing the bar low. A ritual massacre hailed as a triumph in fb’s colosseum…