Abstract
This paper focuses on the experiential and narrative logics of public storytelling by Sierra Leonean Muslims living in Washington D.C. I illustrate how reflexive accounts of loss, despair, and accommodation to diasporic circumstances produce interpretive vocabularies that enable subjects to negotiate highly charged contested moments that emerge at the intersection of nostalgic longing, global Muslim expression, and exilic displacement. I examine how the public expression of personal narrative is an effective strategy to interrogate the Sierra Leonean Muslim diasporic experience and contribute to the production of post-migration subjectivities. In so doing, I show how publicly articulated self-understanding can be especially useful for the exploration of the ways that nostalgic longing for Sierra Leone and everyday lived experiences in the diaspora form new understandings, spatial practices, and material expression that call attention to and counter intense feelings of displacement with a collective sense of belonging that has a profound impact on the way diasporic urban spaces are reimagined. Publicly sharing powerful affective personal stories allows people to negotiate the ongoing struggle to reconcile complex positionalities that reside in the disjunctive gap between home and diaspora and provide insights into the intersection of individual life trajectories and collective forces beyond the individual. They thus offer a methodologically privileged location from which to comprehend human agency and the intersubjective dimensions of social life lived across transnational ethnoscapes.
Presenters
JoAnn D'AliseraAssociate Professor, Anthropology, University of Arkansas, Arkansas, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Ethnography, Urban Space and Place, Material Expression and Practice, Public Storytelling, Belonging, Displacement, Community Dynamics, Sierra Leonean Muslims
