The Bohemian Diaspora

Now the shifts and schisms in the margins reflect the tug-of-war going on throughout the world: the trend towards globalization versus the trend towards community. The pressure to assimilate versus the urge to segregate.

Traditionally, an artist like Gómez-Peña would be seen as culturally specific, not universal. In fact, he is both, though his universalism is lost on those who see only Otherness. "Our generation belongs to the world's biggest floating population," he once wrote in one of his manifestos. And he's not just referring to an ethnic group. He means all of us—"the weary travelers, the dislocated, those who left because we didn't fit anymore, those who still haven't arrived because we don't know where to arrive at, or because we can't go back anymore. Our deepest generational emotion is that of loss." This perfectly describes the bohemian diaspora: an autonomous zone of the mind.

We've come full circle, back to the original meaning of the word bohémien:"gypsy." Of course, bohemia was always part of the exile tradition, the place where the lost ones went to find each other. But it was exile from one tangible place to another. Now that there isno place, the exiles have become nomads, and there's a whole culture of the disappeared.