Depicting Diaspora

Abstract

The ambivalence and uncertainty of life in the Diaspora, specifically the effects of diasporic existence on a number of twentieth-century artists across time and place, provide the framework for Carol Zemel’s volume. Comprising five case studies, Zemel’s project takes as its starting point the declaration of the self-proclaimed Diasporist painter R.B. Kitaj in his oft-quoted First Diasporist Manifesto: “Diasporist painting, which I just made up, is enacted under peculiar historical and personal freedoms, stresses, dislocation, rupture and momentum” (p. 1). Indeed, in First Diasporist Manifesto, Kitaj constructed the concept of the “Diasporist painter” to refer to artists, such as himself, who paint “in two or more societies at once” (p. 2). A Diasporist painter can be any Other for, according to Kitaj, “If a people is dispersed, hurt, hounded, uneasy, their pariah condition confounds expectation in profound and complex ways. So it must be in aesthetic matters.”1 Whereas Kitaj implies that Diasporism can be universal, he often positions the concept in terms that relate specifically to Judaism: “Painting is a great idea I carry from place to place. It is an idea full of ideas, like a refugee’s suitcase, a portable Ark of the Covenant.”2 The influence of such a “pariah condition” on art deeply concerned Kitaj, as it does Zemel, who examines it from an unequivocally Jewish perspective. Zemel’s introduction aptly defines Diaspora in its modern incarnation, which comes to the fore amid new concerns that emerged after the Enlightenment and the Jews’ subsequent emancipation. After reviewing thoughts on Diaspora by an array of thinkers, including William Safran, James Clifford, and others, Zemel leans most heavily on Simon Dubnow, a Russian Jewish historian. Dubnow firmly believed that despite their diasporic status, Jews could and should retain their nationhood, yet still live in concert with a host nation by relying on internal structures and spiritual consciousness rather than a physically defined territory. Zemel finds this duality of Diaspora useful on two levels. First, she argues, its double character prompts creativity, the cornerstone of her study.