Cirrus@Austlit

'“Diaspora” is an old word and idea but is also one that is still debated. The word in English comes from the post-classical Latin diaspora or its etymon in the “Hellenistic Greek διασπορά act of dispersion, group of people who have been dispersed < ancient Greek δια-dia-prefix + σπορά sowing, seed (see spore n.), after ancient Greek διασπείρειν to disperse” (“diaspora, n.”, OED Online). The word beginning with a capital letter in English, from the 1690s, means Jews living outside Israel; and the term in lower case, from the 1740s, signifies any people beyond their origin or homeland. In some ways, it might be better to go to the earlier word, “dispersion”, from the 1340s, referring to the scattering of the Jews (definition 5 in “dispersion, n.”, OED Online). An alternative title for this Special Issue could be “Chinese Dispersed Writing” as dispersed is an earlier and perhaps less loaded term, but here, given the debate in colonial and postcolonial studies, “diasporic” is used even if the term seems more loaded (Braziel and Mannur ' (Jonathan Locke Hart : Introduction: Chinese diasporic writing : Introduction)