Unsettling the national : heritage and diaspora

This chapter discusses the complex and problematic relationships between heritage and diaspora. Bringing these two concepts together opens up a range of tensions which trouble the intimate interrelationship that presumably exists among (national) identity, memory and heritage. A diasporic perspective cracks open the nationalist narrative of seamless national unity, highlighting the fact that nations today inevitably harbour populations with multiple pasts, bringing memories and identities into circulation that often transcend or undercut the homogenising image of nationhood and national heritage. At the same time, applying a heritage lens on the diasporic experience reveals some of the internal tensions and contradictions in the very idea of diaspora, which exemplify the multifaceted complexities of identity formation in the contemporary globalised world, which cannot be contained within the cultural and geographical confines of the nation-state.