Diasporic Subjectivities

This article explores connections between the notion of diaspora and theories of subjectivity and language, especially in the work of Sartre and Derrida. In L’Etre et le néant Sartre relates the pour-soi to the Jewish Diaspora, and in Le Monolinguisme de l’autre Derrida refers to his own experience in Algeria to develop ideas about the originary alienation from place and language. The diasporic subject has no home or language of its own; it has no assurance of its place with a settled order which would secure its sense of belonging or even its existence. Some of the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of this are explored with reference to recent films and Camus’s short story ‘L’Hôte’.