The Temporalities of Diasporic Heritage in New York
Critical approaches to heritage invite reflections on how Portuguese-speak-ing diasporic communities in the New York metropolitan area articulate forms of com-munity, collective memory, and embodied culture. While the region’s Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants and their descendants recognize their shared language through educational and linguistic initiatives, they celebrate their national differences during annual festivals of Portugal Day in Newark in June and Brazilian Day in New York in September. These festivities exemplify the function of heritage as a comment on the past constructed in the present through displays of cultural practices and traditions. To examine the manifestations and repercussions of heritage work among diasporic com-munities, this article analyzes how Portugal Day and Brazilian Day serve to foster collec-tivity among immigrant groups on the basis of national affiliations and also commodify their cultures as temporally and/or spatially “other” and, thus, exotic for contemporary residents of the New York area. The performances at Portugal Day and Brazilian Day as “authentic” expressions of national cultures differ, however, especially with respect to temporalities. An interest in preserving cultural traditions from previous centuries permeates Portugal Day, which contrasts with the greater emphasis on contemporary musicians and artists at Brazilian Day. I suggest that these temporal orientations point to different strains of national identity and culture as encapsulated by the concept of saudade in Portugal and the idea of Brazil as “the country of the future” and, moreover, the distinct histories of Portuguese and Brazilian migration to the United States.
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Work Title | The Temporalities of Diasporic Heritage in New York |
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License | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) |
Work Type | Article |
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Publication Date | August 17, 2022 |
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Deposited | January 25, 2024 |
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