As I reflect on what it means for diaspora to be sited, Hayle’s words illuminate a puzzling interlinkage between diaspora and database: both “can only speak that which can be explicitly spoken” (1605). When I think of Karen peoples’ movement across time and space, I think of fixed dates and mappable locations—material sites locked into self-contained yet limitless (in expansion) logic. However, diaspora demands a reckoning with illogic: those “null values” whose uncategorizable (im)materiality can only be spoken into fleeting shape by narrative. Do oral histories reopen landscapes collapsed by space and time? (94) [JZ – 04]
[Hayle, 2007]
