Transpositioning Diaspora: Assemblage, Mobility, and Writing

This article introduces transpositioning as a core ethics of diaspora writing as world literature. Transpositioning refers to a sociopsychological disposition that transcends all singular positions or stances. Glossing the social theory of positioning with a trans- prefix enables us to think not just between positions or stances but beyond any potential fixation on a position or stance. The article proposes to conceive of diaspora literature as a creative, multimodal assemblage comprising mobile vectors that can only attain transient stability. The boundaries of this assemblage are always shifting and cut through normative lines of geopolitical or sociocultural identification. In order for this literature to thrive, transpositioning is key. This means that authors, readers, and critics will need to always be in the flow-and-flux in terms of how they enact their own identity positions in relation to those of others, both within and beyond their own diaspora.