The proposed panel explores divergent experiences of migration, displacement, and survival through works of literature and personal narratives. By deploying Deleuze’s and Guattari’s notion of rhizome (1980) as a model and mode of analysis, the panel attempts to de-center dominant narratives of nationhood, diaspora, and histories of colonialism. In doing so, the panel instead aims to center voices on the margins of empire and national geo-bodies (Winichakul, 1994). The proposed panel consists of four individual papers that are organized on the theme of rhizomatic connections of diasporas.

We organized the panel because the model of "rhizome" enables us to explore genealogical entanglements and parallel routes of indenture and migration across time and space (19^th century post-liberation Caribbean women, Northeast Indian diasporic literature, Lebanese community elders in Windsor, Canada, and the first-generation Japanese settler in contemporary Turtle Island). Our exploration reveals how stories of historically marginalized peoples and personal narratives illuminate shared moments of hope and the mitigation of the identity politics for the futurity of diasporas.

The proposed panel speaks to the existing scholarship of several thinkers, including, but not limited to, Édouard Glissant, Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze for their theorizing of rhizomatic connections and resistance; Walter Mignolo for his philosophy of liberation and decoloniality; and Stuart Hall for his critical theorizing of race, migration, and literature.

This session will include four presenters, each allotted 13 minutes to share their work. The additional 2 minutes per person will allow for the presider to offer a brief biographical introduction about each speaker. By the end of the 4 presentations, there will be 15 minutes available for Q&A (and broader discussion) with the audience.

The presentations have been arranged to center the eastern hemisphere homelands and to move counter to Anglophone left-right or west-east paths; i.e., our first presenter, Dr. Kyoko Sato, will launch our discussion by addressing the ways in which diasporic communities seek identity and belonging during times of collective crisis. In this context, she focuses on Japan and the Japanese diaspora in Canada, and the “yearning” for kinship and belonging as members of the diaspora during the COVID-19 pandemic in Tkaronto (Toronto). Next, Tina Borah focuses on diasporic experience within a national boundary; namely, the disruption of linear migration narratives that focus on nostalgia and return in Northeast India. She argues that diasporic subjectivity is constituted through networks of fluid, shifting linkages rather than a singular attachment to homeland or "hostland." Our third presenter, Dr. Victoria Abboud, moves the discussion towards Lebanese literature and community by tracing the search for family identity and belonging among a group of Lebanese elders. She follows the perceived “reach” of rhizomatic roots from Lebanon to Canada and back again. Saide Singh will then provide a deep exploration into the specificities of intercultural food relationalities through descendent women in African and Indian communities. Specifically, Singh will problematize the flattening of Caribbean food histories that rely solely on colonial narrativization. Her work creates a clear and complete perspective that grounds the other presentations through a common challenge of micropolitics: the merging of food cultures and identities through descendent migrant communities.

Panelists were selected based on four key considerations: (1) balanced representation of the diaspora “host” country (there are 2 presenters from Canada and 2 presenters from the United States, all of whose familial ties link back through time to the eastern hemisphere; (2) balanced representation of presenter career stages (there are 2 presenters who are in the middle of their doctoral studies and 2 presenters who are lecturers; (3) broad representation of “homelands” and diasporic communities that are from outside of North America; and (4) subversion of the common “male” voice of the theorists we engage by focusing instead on our theorizing and analyses through our female voices.

We selected presenters that would offer analyses and engagement with cultural, ethnic, and national identities from parts of the world where the political boundaries could be crossed and questioned while the unique perspectives of the literature and languages represented would offer a blend of nuanced differences and similarities. By merging these communities into one panel, we intend to offer a view of the intercultural and micropolitical contexts that are at one and the same time common yet distinct. Holding both and exploring that complexity becomes part of the broader engagement with the concept of the rhizomatic diaspora; i.e., our panel is actually a living example of the conceptual and theoretical approaches that we address through the literatures and languages we study and share.