Black Atlantic and African Diaspora

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject African Studies - African diaspora, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Faculty of Social Sciences), course: History, language: English, abstract: The word 'Diaspora' alone is simple to define; a large group of people with similar heritage or homeland who have since moved out to settle at a different place. The complexity thus arises with adding "e;Africa"e; to the word. ."e; What is "e;Africa"e; and who are "e;Africans"e; that constitute, when dispersed and reconstituted, "e;African diaspora?"e; Another complexity is the issue with the way in which "e;Africans"e; moved from their ancestral homes into the diaspora. Paul Gilroy and some early scholars on the topic concentrated on the "e;Atlantic"e;, focused on dispersal of African people through enslavement and the survival of cultural traits from Africa in the New World. This basically looks at the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade (TAST) and life of "e;Africans"e; in the New World and Americas, as well as the kind of culture these people exhibited. Contemporary studies on the concept of the African Diaspora however have brought to bear the need to "e;de-Atlanticize and de-Americanize the histories of African diasporas"e; This is to say that, the Atlantic and the America World are just a portion of a more broader and complex concept, hence, the need to expand the scope to include additional subjects on geography, racial pre-occupation and the context of neo-diaspora. In doing so, there will be the realization that the concept of the "e;African Diaspora"e; is not necessarily synonymous with Paul Gilroy's "e;Black Atlantic"e;.