Transculturality, Postmigration, and the Imagining of a New Sense of Belonging

Abstract

This article submits that postmigrant and diasporic perspectives can be used to broaden and refine the transcultural approach. It explores how the concept of the diasporic imaginary can be brought into a productive interplay with another key concept in the discussions on art, culture, and global migration: the concept of postmigration (das Postmigrantische). This concept holds that European societies are currently struggling to learn how to accommodate the frictional cultural diversity inherent in what recent scholarship has designated “migration societies” (Matejskova and Antonsich) and “postmigrant societies” (Foroutan). The article relates this overarching discussion to the study of contemporary art in public spaces. Seeking to provide an alternative to national frameworks for understanding community and belonging, this study asks: How would our understanding change if the diasporic and the postmigratory were imagined as the very conditions of possibility for narrating collective identities today? Furthermore, how can art contribute?