The Biblical Exodus narrative supplied black Atlantic liberation discourse with its governing metaphor.

Evidence

This powerful interpretation of the concept of “diaspora” is the one most familiar to Caribbean people. It has become part of our newly constructed collective sense of self and deeply written in the subtext of nationalist histories. It is modeled on the modern history of the Jewish people (from whom the term “diaspora” was first derived), whose fate in the Holocaust—one of the few world-historical events comparable in barbarity to that of modern slavery—is well known. More significant, however, for the Caribbean is the Old Testament version of the story. There we find the analogue, critical to our history, of “the chosen people,” taken away by violence into slavery in “Egypt”; their “suffering” at the hands of “Babylon”; the leadership of Moses, followed by the Great Exodus—“movement of Jah People”—out of bondage and the return to the Promised Land. This is the ur-source of that great New World narrative of freedom, hope, and redemption which is repeated again and again throughout slavery: the Exodus and the “Freedom Ride.” It has provided every black New World liberatory discourse with its governing metaphor. Many believe this Old Testament narrative to be much more powerful for the popular imaginary of New World black people than the so-called Christmas story. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 825

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly into the reader’s Scaffolding Theory toolkit: this is the imagined-community narrative mechanism, connecting to Anderson’s imagined communities and to the construction of the ‘Other’ via liberatory self-mythology.
• DEFINE: Establishes the diasporic ‘mythic narrative’ version of diaspora identity as a defined construct with a specific Biblical template.