Diasporic

From where is it possible to begin? All Greeks are used to living among ruins, even those, like me, who are offspring of two diasporas: the exchange of populations after the end of the Ottoman Empire, and second great diaspora after World War Two. The latter scattered Greeks to several countries and continents, primarily to the United States and Australia and, in my case, England. How is it possible to present a continuous narrative out of diaspora, when diaspora involves interruption, a shattering of history, biography, and identity? I have come to think that my tendency to write in fragments and, as a photographer, to deal in fragments, has something to do with such uprootedness. But maybe an openness to other people, other histories, other cultures, is also the result of being a child of the Greek diaspora.  Borders offer limits but also invite us to exceed those limits. By this stage in my life, I have come to the realisation that borders cannot be drawn as rigid straight lines. Rather, they follow the curve of the question mark with which the Cameroonian philosopher, Achille Mbembe concludes when he writes: Is the edge of the world a place from which to speak the world?' ( At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa' in Public Culture 12:1 (Winter 2000): 259-84)