Academic literature on the topic 'Museum van Oudheden (Utrecht, Netherlands)'

AbstractThe nucleus of the collection of paintings in the Mauritshuis around 130 pictures - came from the hereditary stadholder Prince William v. It is widely believed to have become, the property of the State at the beginning of the 19th century, but how this happened is still. unclear. A hand-written notebook on this subject, compiled in 1876 by - the director Jonkheer J. K. L. de Jonge is in the archives of the Mauritshuis Note 4). On this basis a clnsor systematic and chronological investigation has been carried out into the stadholder's. property rights in respect of his collectcons and the changes these underwent between 1795 and 1816. Royal decrees and other documents of the period 1814- 16 in particular giae a clearer picture of whal look place. 0n 18 January 1795 William V (Fig. 2) left the Netherlands and fled to England. On 22 January the Dutch Republic was occupied by French armies. Since France had declared war on the stadholder, the ownership of all his propergy in the Netherlands, passed to France, in accordance with the laws of war of the time. His famous art collections on the Builerth of in. The Hague were taken to Paris, but the remaining art objects, distributed over his various houses, remained in the Netherlands. On 16 May 1795 the French concluded a treaty with the Batavian Republic, recognizing it as an independent power. All the properties of William v in the Netehrlands but not those taken to France, were made over to the Republic (Note 14), which proceeded to sell objects from the collections, at least seven sales taking place until 1798 (Note 15). A plan was then evolved to bring the remaining treasures together in a museum in emulation of the French. On the initiative of J. A. Gogel, the Nationale Konst-Galerij', the first national museum in the .Netherlands, was estahlished in The Hague and opened to the public on ,31 May 1800. Nothing was ever sold from lhe former stadholder's library and in 1798 a Nationale Bibliotheek was founded as well. In 1796, quite soon after the French had carried off the Stadholder, possessions to Paris or made them over to the Batavian Republic, indemnification was already mentioned (Note 19). However, only in the Trealy of Amiens of 180 and a subaequent agreement, between France ararl Prussia of 1 802, in which the Prince of Orarage renounced his and his heirs' rights in the Netherlands, did Prussia provide a certain compensation in the form of l.artds in Weslphalia and Swabia (Note 24) - William v left the management of these areas to the hereditary prince , who had already been involved in the problems oncerning his father's former possessions. In 1804 the Balavian Republic offered a sum of five million guilders 10 plenipotentiaries of the prince as compensation for the sequestrated titles and goods, including furniture, paintings, books and rarities'. This was accepted (Notes 27, 28), but the agreement was never carried out as the Batavian Republic failed to ratify the payment. In the meantime the Nationale Bibliolkeek and the Nationale Konst-Galerij had begun to develop, albeit at first on a small scale. The advent of Louis Napoleon as King of Hollarad in 1806 brought great changes. He made a start on a structured art policy. In 1806 the library, now called `Royal', was moved to the Mauritshuis and in 1808 the collectiorts in The Hague were transferred to Amsterdam, where a Koninklijk Museum was founded, which was housed in the former town hall. This collection was subsequertly to remain in Amsterdam, forming the nucleus of the later Rijksmuseum. The library too was intended to be transferred to Amsterdam, but this never happened and it remained in the Mauritshuis until 1819. Both institutions underwent a great expansion in the period 1806-10, the library's holdings increasing from around 10,000 to over 45,000 books and objects, while the museum acquired a number of paintings, the most important being Rembrandt's Night Watch and Syndics, which were placed in the new museum by the City of Amsterdam in 1808 (Note 44). In 1810 the Netherlands was incorporated into France. In the art field there was now a complete standstill and in 1812 books and in particular prints (around 11,000 of them) were again taken from The Hague to Paris. In November 1813 the French dominion was ended and on 2 December the hereditary prince, William Frederick, was declared sovereign ruler. He was inaugurated as constitutional monarch on 30 March 1814. On January 3rd the provisional council of The Hague had already declared that the city was in (unlawful' possession of a library, a collection of paintings, prints and other objects of art and science and requested the king tot take them back. The war was over and what had been confiscated from William under the laws of war could now be given back, but this never happened. By Royal Decree of 14 January 1814 Mr. ( later Baron) A. J. C. Lampsins (Fig. I ) was commissioned to come to an understanding with the burgomaster of The Hague over this transfer, to bring out a report on the condition of the objects and to formulate a proposal on the measures to be taken (Note 48). On 17 January Lampsins submitted a memorandum on the taking over of the Library as the private property of His Royal Highness the Sovereign of the United Netherlartds'. Although Lampsins was granted the right to bear the title 'Interim Director of the Royal Library' by a Royal Decree of 9 February 1814, William I did not propose to pay The costs himself ; they were to be carried by the Home Office (Note 52). Thus he left the question of ownership undecided. On 18 April Lampsins brought out a detailed report on all the measures to be taken (Appendix IIa ) . His suggestion was that the objects, formerly belonging to the stadholder should be removed from the former royal museum, now the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam and to return the 'Library', as the collectiort of books, paintings and prints in The Hague was called, to the place where they had been in 1795. Once again the king's reaction was not very clear. Among other things, he said that he wanted to wait until it was known how extensive the restitution of objects from Paris would be and to consider in zvhich scholarly context the collections would best, fit (Note 54) . While the ownership of the former collections of Prince William I was thus left undecided, a ruling had already been enacted in respect of the immovable property. By the Constitution of 1814, which came into effect on 30 March, the king was granted a high income, partly to make up for the losses he had sulfered. A Royal Decree of 22 January 1815 does, however, imply that William had renounced the right to his, father's collections, for he let it be known that he had not only accepted the situation that had developed in the Netherlands since 1795, but also wished it to be continued (Note 62). The restitution of the collections carried off to France could only be considered in its entirety after the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815- This was no simple matter, but in the end most, though not all, of the former possessions of William V were returned to the Netherlands. What was not or could not be recovered then (inc.uding 66 paintings, for example) is still in France today (Note 71)- On 20 November 1815 127 paintings, including Paulus Potter's Young Bull (Fig. 15), made a ceremonial entry into The Hague. But on 6 October, before anything had actually been returned, it had already been stipulated by Royal Decree that the control of the objects would hence forlh be in the hands of the State (Note 72). Thus William I no longer regarded his father's collections as the private property of the House of Orange, but he did retain the right to decide on the fulure destiny of the... painting.s and objects of art and science'. For the time being the paintings were replaced in the Gallery on the Buitenhof, from which they had been removed in 1795 (Note 73). In November 1815 the natural history collection was made the property of Leiden University (Note 74), becoming the basis for the Rijksmuseum voor Natuurlijke Historie, The print collection, part of the Royal Library in The Hague, was exchanged in May 1816 for the national collectiort of coins and medals, part of the Rijksmuseum. As of 1 Jufy 1816 directors were appointed for four different institutions in The Hague, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (with the Koninklijk Penningkabinet ) , the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Yoninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 80) . From that time these institutions led independenl lives. The king continued to lake a keen interest in them and not merely in respect of collecting Their accommodation in The Hague was already too cramped in 1816. By a Royal Decree of 18 May 1819 the Hotel Huguetan, the former palace of the. crown prince on Lange Voorhout, was earmarked for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Koninklijk Penningkabinet (Note 87) . while at the king's behest the Mauritshuis, which had been rented up to then, was bought by the State on 27 March 1820 and on IO July allotted to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 88). Only the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen is still in the place assigned to it by William and the collection has meanwhile become so identified with its home that it is generally known as the Mauritshui.s'. William i's most important gift was made in July 1816,just after the foundation of the four royal institutions, when he had deposited most of the objects that his father had taken first to England and later to Oranienstein in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden. The rarities (Fig. 17), curios (Fig. 18) and paintings (Fig. 19), remained there (Note 84), while the other art objects were sorted and divided between the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the manuscripts and books) and the koninklijk Penningkabinet (the cameos and gems) (Note 85). In 1819 and 182 the king also gave the Koninklijke Bibliotheek an important part of the Nassau Library from the castle at Dillenburg. Clearly he is one of the European monarchs who in the second half of the 18th and the 19th century made their collectiorts accessible to the public, and thus laid the foundatinns of many of today's museums. But William 1 also made purchases on behalf of the institutions he had created. For the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, for example, he had the 'Tweede Historiebijbel', made in Utrecht around 1430, bought in Louvain in 1829 for 1, 134 guilders (Pigs.30,3 I, Note 92). For the Koninkijk Penningkabinet he bought a collection of 62 gems and four cameos , for ,50,000 guilders in 1819. This had belonged to the philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis, the keeper of his father's cabinet of antiquities (Note 95) . The most spectacular acquisition. for the Penninukabinet., however, was a cameo carved in onyx, a late Roman work with the Triumph of Claudius, which the king bought in 1823 for 50,000 guilders, an enormous sum in those days. The Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamhedert also received princely gifts. In 1821- the so-called doll's house of Tzar Peter was bought out of the king's special funds for 2.800 guilders (Figs.33, 34, ,Note 97) , while even in 1838, when no more money was available for art, unnecessary expenditure on luxury' the Von Siebold ethnographical collection was bought at the king's behest for over 55,000 guilders (Note 98). The Koninklijk Kabinel van Schilderyen must have been close to the hearl of the king, who regarded it as an extension of the palace (Notes 99, 100) . The old master paintings he acquzred for it are among the most important in the collection (the modern pictures, not dealt with here, were transferred to the Paviljoen Welgelegen in Haarlem in 1838, Note 104). For instance, in 1820 he bought a portrait of Johan Maurice of Nassau (Fig.35)., while in 1822, against the advice of the then director, he bought Vermeer' s View of Delft for 2,900 guilders (Fig.36, Note 105) and in 1827 it was made known, from Brussels that His Majesty had recommended the purchase of Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation (Fig.37) . The most spectacular example of the king's love for 'his' museum, however, is the purchase in 1828 of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp for 32,000 guilders. The director of the Rijksmuseum, C. Apostool, cortsidered this Rembrandt'sfinest painting and had already drawn attention to it in 1817, At the king'.s behest the picture, the purchase of which had been financed in part by the sale of a number of painlings from. the Rijksmuseum, was placed in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen in The Hague. On his accession King William I had left the art objects which had become state propery after being ceded by the French to the Batavian Republic in 1795 as they were. He reclaimed the collections carried off to France as his own property, but it can be deduced from the Royal Decrees of 1815 and 1816 that it Was his wish that they should be made over to the State, including those paintings that form the nucleus of the collection in the Mauritshuis. In addition, in 1816 he handed over many art objects which his father had taken with him into exile. His son, William II, later accepted this, after having the matter investigated (Note 107 and Appendix IV). Thus William I'S munificence proves to have been much more extensive than has ever been realized.

- M.A. van Bakel, R. Borofsky, Making history; Pukapukan and anthropological constructions of knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 201 pp.; ill. - Andrew Beatty, J.A. Feldman et al., Nias, tribal treasures: Cosmic reflections in stone, wood and gold, Delft: Volkenkundig Museum Nusantara, 1990. - A.G. van Beek, Christian F. Feest, Technologie und ergologie in der Völkerkunde, Band 2, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Ethnologische Paperbacks, 1989. xiv, 290 pp., Alfred Janata (eds.) - N. Bootsma, Bernhard Dahm, José Rizal, Der nationalheld der Filipinos, Zürich: Munster-Schmidt Verlag Göttingen, 1988, 88 pp. - Aart G. Broek, John de Pool, Bolívar op / en Curaçoa: Historische novelle / leyende histórico [Inleiding door / introducción del L.W. Statius van Eps en / y E. Luckmann-Levy Maduro; vertaling uit het Spaans door L. Hoetink-Espinal], Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1988. - Martin van Bruinessen, Peter Kloos, Door het oog van de antropoloog: Botsende visies bij heronderzoek. Muiderberg: Dick Coutinho, 1988, 148 pp. - J.G. de Casparis, Charles Higham, The Archaeology of mainland Southeast Asia. From 10,000 B.C. to the fall of Angkor. Cambridge World Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. - H.J.M. Claessen, Luc de Heusch, Ecrits sur la royauté sacrée. Brussel, Institut de Sociologie: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. 1987. 314 pp. - H. Dagmar, Erich Kolig, The Noonkanbah Story, Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1987. - Anke van Dijke, Linda Terpstra, Anil Ramdas, De strijd van de dansers; Biografische vertellingen uit Curaçao, Amsterdam: SUA, 1988. - B.F. Galjart, Hans-Dieter Evers, Strategische gruppen. Vergleichende studien zu staat, bürokratie und klassenbildung in der dritten welt. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1988, 279 pp., Tilman Schiel (eds.) - J. Hoffenaar, G. Teitler, Anatomie van de Indische defensie: Scenario’s, plannen, beleid 1892-1920. [Anatomy of the defence of the Netherlands East Indies: Scenarios, plans, policy 1892-1920], Amsterdam: Van Soeren, 1988, 482 pp. - Rudy de Jongh, Sjoerd Rienk Jaarsma, Waarneming en interpretatie. Vergaring en gebruik van ethnografische informatie in Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea (1950-1962). Utrecht: Interdisiplinair Sociaal Wetenschappelijk Onderzoekinstituut Rijksuniversiteit, 1990. 247 pp. English summary. - Ward Keeler, J.Joseph Errington, Structure and style in Javanese: A semiotic view of linguistic etiquette, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, 290 pp. - Ank Klomp, Raymond T. Smith, Kinship and class in the West Indies; A genealogical study of Jamaica and Guyana, Cambridge etc.: Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, Cambridge University Press, 1988. - G.J. Knaap, A.H.P. Clemens, Het belang van de Buitengewesten; Economische expansie en koloniale staatsvorming in de Buitengewesten van Nederlands-Indië 1870-1942, NEHA-series III, deel 7, Amsterdam: NEHA, viii + 306 pp. 1989., J.Th. Lindblad (eds.) - Jaap de Moor, E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga, Van compagnie naar koopvaardij; De scheepvaartverbinding van de Bataafse Republiek met de koloniën in Azië 1795-1806, Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988. [Hollandse Historische Reeks, no. IX.] 320 pp., kaart, ills., tabellen, bibliografie, index. - Otto van den Muijzenberg, Jean-Claude Lejosne, Le journal de voyage de G. van Wuysthoff et de ses assistants au Laos (1641-1642), Metz: Editions du Centre de Documentation du Cercle de Culture et de Recherches Laotiennes, 1987. 370 pp., 3 indices, bibliography, maps, illustrations. - Gert J. Oostindie, M.J. van den Blink, Olie op de golven; De betrekkingen tussen Nederland/Curaçao en Venezuela gedurende de eerste helft van de twintigste eeuw, Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988, 128 pp. - Rien Ploeg, Robert M. Hill II, Continuities in highland Maya social organisation, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, xxii + 176 pp., 1987., John Monaghan (eds.) - Harry A. Poeze, Takashi Shiraishi, An age in motion; Popular radicalism in Java, 1912-1926, Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1990. xxiv + 365 pp. - Rob de Ridder, Willem F.H. Adelaar, Het boek van Huarochirí. Mythen en riten van het Oude Peru, Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1988, 150 pp., - Marie-Odette Scalliet, Peter Carey, A.A.J. Payen: Journal de mon voyage à Jogja Karta en 1825. The outbreak of the Java War (1825-30) as seen by a painter, Cahier d’Archipel 17, Paris 1988. XIV + 183 pp., 17 ill., 3 maps. - Matthew Schoffeleers, Marion Melk-Koch, Auf der Suche nach der menschlichen Gesellschaft: Richard Thurnwald, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1989. 352 pp., maps, photographs and Thurnwald bibliography. - Matthew Schoffeleers, Peter Metcalf, Where are you / Spirits? Style and theme in Berawan prayer, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, 345 pp. - J.W. Schoorl, J.F.L.M. Cornelissen, Pater en Papoea; Ontmoeting van de Missionarissen van het Heileg Hart met de cultuur der Papoea’s van Nederlands Zuid-Nieuw-Guinea (1905-1963), Kampen: Kok, 1988, XIV + 256 pp. - Alex van Stipriaan, Jo Derkx, Suriname; A bibliography, 1980-1989, Leiden: KITLV (Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology), Department of Caribbean studies, 1990, 297 pp., Irene Rolfes (eds.) - A.A. Trouwborst, Th. Schweizer (Hg), Netzwerkanalyse; Ethnologische perspektiven, Berlin: Dietrich Reimerverlag, 1989, VIII, 229 pp. - Hans Vermeulen, Brian Juan O’Neill, Social inequality in a Portugese hamlet; Land, late marriage and bastardy, 1870-1978, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 431 pp. 1987. - C.W. Watson, Hendrick M.J. Maier, In the center of authority. The Malay Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, Ithaca: Southeast Asia program, Studies on Southeast Asia , 1988. 210 pp. - Neil Lancelot Whitehead, Edmundo Magaña, Orión y la mujer Pléyades. Simbolismo astronómico de los indios kaliña de Surinam, Dordrecht/Providence: Foris, 1988. [CEDLA Latin American studies series 44.] 373 pp. - J.J. de Wolf, Meyer Fortes, Religion, morality and the person: Essays on Tallensi religion, edited and with an introduction by Jack Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. These two axes are constantly reshuffled and renegotiated online where, thanks to the technological possibilities of HTML hypertext, a whole range of identities and identifications may be brought together at any given time. We trust that these insights will be of interest in future discussion of online networks, transnational communities, identity formation, and hypertext aesthetics where much urgent and topical work remains to be done. References Adamic, Lada A., and Eytan Adar. “You Are What You Link.” 2001 Tenth International World Wide Web Conference, Hong Kong. 26 Apr. 2010. ‹http://www10.org/program/society/yawyl/YouAreWhatYouLink.htm›. Ali B. “Leipe Mocro Flavour.” ALIB.NL / SPEC Entertainment. 2007. 4 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www3.alib.nl/popupAlibtv.php?catId=42&contentId=544›. Alonso, Andoni, and Pedro J. Oiarzabal. Diasporas in the New Media Age. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2006 (1983). Aoyama, Shana. Nikkei-Ness: A Cyber-Ethnographic Exploration of Identity among the Japanese Peruvians of Peru. Unpublished MA thesis. South Hadley: Mount Holyoke, 2007. 1 Feb. 2010 ‹http://hdl.handle.net/10166/736›. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: U College London P, 1997. Everett, Anna. Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany: SUNY, 2009. Fernández, María. “Postcolonial Media Theory.” Art Journal 58.3 (1999): 58-73. Georgiou, Myria. Diaspora, Identity and the Media: Diasporic Transnationalism and Mediated Spatialities. Creskill: Hampton Press, 2006. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Gower, Eric. “When the Virtual Becomes the Real: A Talk with Benedict Anderson.” NIRA Review, 1996. 19 Apr. 2010 ‹http://www.nira.or.jp/past/publ/review/96spring/intervi.html›. Haraway, Donna. Modest Witness@Second Millennium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997. Ito, Mizuko, et al. Hanging Out, Messing Out, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. Japanese American National Museum. “Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendants.” Discover Nikkei, 2005. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/›. Lama, Abraham. “Home Is Where the Heartbreak Is for Japanese-Peruvians.” Asia Times 16 Oct. 1999. 6 May 2010 ‹http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/AJ16Dh01.html›. Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0. Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Leurs, Koen. Identity, Migration and Digital Media. Utrecht: Utrecht University. PhD Thesis, forthcoming. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. The Internet: An Etnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Mo. “Marokkanen met Brainz.” Hyves, 23 Feb. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://marokkaansehersens.hyves.nl/›. Odin, Jaishree K. “The Edge of Difference: Negotiations between the Hypertextual and the Postcolonial.” Modern Fiction Studies 43.3 (1997): 598-630. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Narratives @ Home Pages: The Future as Virtually Located.” Colonies – Missions – Cultures in the English-Speaking World. Ed. Gerhard Stilz. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2001. 396–406. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Subjects and Migration.” Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies. Ed. Gabrielle Griffin and Rosi Braidotti. London: Zed Books, 2002. 205–20. Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1.1 (1991): 83-99. Schäfer, Mirko T. Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2011. Van Doorn, Niels, and Liesbeth van Zoonen. “Theorizing Gender and the Internet: Past, Present, and Future.” Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Ed. Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard. London: Routledge. 261-74.