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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until August 06, 2028

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The Quest for a Homeland: Return and Identity Construction in the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora

Olugbuyiro, Ayodeji Richard
http://orcid.org/0009-0004-4552-178X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1689777128615962

Abstract Details

2023, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Spanish and Portuguese.
This dissertation analyzes the phenomenon of transatlantic homeland return in African and Afro-diasporic cultural productions. The studied works comprise six literary and cinematic texts, intersecting the genres of novel, memoir, historical fiction, and speculative fiction. The time periods depicted in the texts range from 1835, beginning with the reverse migration of Africans who participated in the Malê slave uprising of Bahia, to recent experiences in the twenty-first century, and they depict literal and metaphorical returns to motherland Africa by Africans and diasporic Afro-descendants from Brazil, and the United States. Whereas dominant discourses on the topic of return in the Afro-Atlantic diaspora by scholars such as Frantz Fanon (1961), Edouard Glissant (1989), Stuart Hall (1990), Paul Gilroy (1993), and Saidiya Hartman (2007) have diminished its cultural and ideological significance due to the possibility of ambivalent experiences, I push back in this dissertation to argue that notwithstanding the ambivalences, the phenomenon of return through its motif in cultural productions constitutes an empowering paradigm within Afro-diasporic cultural imaginary that allows diasporic Afro-descendants to both negotiate their past, as well as reinvent their future through its creative affordances to rethink diasporic belonging, challenge diasporic alienation and assert the freedom and subjectivity of once displaced Africans. The arguments of the critics of return, particularly of the postmodern classification, can be said to mostly revolve around the nationalist character of return as an antithesis to the postmodern hybrid identity thesis. However, a closer look into the motivations of Afro-diasporic returnees, as I demonstrate in this dissertation, shows that their quest for a homeland is not so much based on a nationalistic impulse, but one motivated by a deeply ingrained ontological clamor for desalienation amidst their crippling diasporic otherness. Consequently, this dissertation demonstrates through the selected literary and cinematic texts how the phenomenon of return in cultural productions retains significant importance in African and Afro-diasporic cultural imaginary as a strategic means to counteract the alienation of diaspora. Also, I demonstrate how a return to Africa offers diasporic returnees a unique opportunity to reclaim their cultural identity and assert their humanity while reconstructing new notions of self-identity and solidarity that aggregate their experiences of diaspora with that of their homeland.
Pedro Schacht Pereira (Committee Chair)
Adeleke Adeeko (Committee Co-Chair)
Isis Barra Costa (Committee Member)
196 p.
African Americans; African Literature; African Studies; Black Studies; Foreign Language; Latin American Studies; Romance Literature
Homeland, Return, Afro-Atlantic Diaspora, Identity, Afro-Brazilian Returnees, Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Olugbuyiro, A. R. (2023). The Quest for a Homeland: Return and Identity Construction in the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1689777128615962

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Olugbuyiro, Ayodeji. The Quest for a Homeland: Return and Identity Construction in the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora. 2023. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1689777128615962.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Olugbuyiro, Ayodeji. "The Quest for a Homeland: Return and Identity Construction in the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1689777128615962

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.