Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility

Arianna Dagnino

Description

In Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility, Arianna Dagnino analyzes a new type of literature emerging from artists increased movement and cultural flows spawned by globalization. This "transcultural" literature is produced by authors who write across cultural and national boundaries and who transcend in their lives and creative production the borders of a single culture. Dagninos book contains a creative rendition of interviews conducted with five internationally renowned writersInez Baranay, Brian Castro, Alberto Manguel, Tim Parks, and Ilija Trojanowand a critical exegesis reflecting on thematical, critical, and stylistical aspects.

By studying the selected authors corpus of work, life experiences, and cultural orientations, Dagnino explores the implicit, often subconscious, process of cultural and imaginative metamorphosis that leads transcultural writers and their fictionalized characters beyond ethnic, national, racial, or religious loci of identity and identity formation. Drawing on the theoretical framework of comparative cultural studies, she offers insight into transcultural writing related to belonging, hybridity, cultural errancy, the "Other," worldviews, translingualism, deterritorialization, neonomadism, as well as genre, thematic patterns, and narrative techniques. Dagnino also outlines the implications of transcultural writing within the wider context of world literature (s) and identifies some of the main traits that characterize transcultural novels.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: Writing and Transcultural Life

Chapter One: Trojanow's Drive Toward Mobility and Cultural Confluences

Chapter Two: Castro, the Other, and the Complexity of Belonging

Chapter Three: Baranay's Transient Life in Writing

Chapter Four: Manguel and the Paradox of Cultural Identity

Chapter Five: Multiple Dimensions of the Transcultural

Part Two: Transcultural Literature in the Age of Multiple Modes of (Post)modernity

Chapter One: Global Nomadism, Multiple Modes of (Post)modernity, and a New Cultural Order

Chapter Two: Transculture, Transculturality, and Transculturalism in the Twenty-First Century

Chapter Three: Transcultural Literature in the Global Ecumene

Chapter Four: Transcultural Writers, Creative Transpatriation, and Transcultural Fiction

Chapter Five: The "Fuzzy" Nature of Transcultural Novels

Conclusion

Glossary of Concepts for the Study of Transculturality

Works Cited

Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Literary theory
• Theory
• Semiotics

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612493763
• Langue: English

Extrait

Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility
Comparative Cultural Studies Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Series Editor
The Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies publishes single-authored and thematic collected volumes of new scholarship. Manuscripts are invited for publication in the series in fields of the study of culture, literature, the arts, media studies, communication studies, the history of ideas, etc., and related disciplines of the humanities and social sciences to the series editor via e-mail at < [e-mail] >. Comparative cultural studies is a contextual approach in the study of culture in a global and intercultural context and work with a plurality of methods and approaches; the theoretical and methodological framework of comparative cultural studies is built on tenets borrowed from the disciplines of cultural studies and comparative literature and from a range of thought including literary and culture theory, (radical) constructivism, communication theories, and systems theories; in comparative cultural studies focus is on theory and method as well as application. For a detailed description of the aims and scope of the series including the style guide of the series link to < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/seriespurdueccs >. Manuscripts submitted to the series are peer reviewed followed by the usual standards of editing, copy editing, marketing, and distribution. The series is affiliated with CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (ISSN 1481-4374), the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access quarterly published by Purdue University Press at < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb >.
Volumes in the Purdue series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies include < http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/comparative-cultural-studies >
Arianna Dagnino, Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility
Elke Sturm-Trigonakis, Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur
Lauren Rule Maxwell, Romantic Revisions in Novels from the Americas
Liisa Steinby, Kundera and Modernity
Text and Image in Modern European Culture , Ed. Natasha Grigorian, Thomas Baldwin, and Margaret Rigaud-Drayton
Sheng-mei Ma, Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity
Irene Marques, Transnational Discourses on Class, Gender, and Cultural Identity
Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies , Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári
Hui Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture
Yi Zheng, From Burke and Wordsworth to the Modern Sublime in Chinese Literature
Agata Anna Lisiak, Urban Cultures in (Post)Colonial Central Europe
Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror , Ed. Sophia A. McClennen and Henry James Morello
Michael Goddard, Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form
Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace , Ed. Alexander C.Y. Huang and Charles S. Ross
Gustav Shpet’s Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory , Ed. Galin Tihanov
Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies , Ed. Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek
Marko Juvan, History and Poetics of Intertextuality
Thomas O. Beebee, Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction
Paolo Bartoloni , On the Cultures of Exile, Translation, and Writing
Justyna Sempruch , Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature
Kimberly Chabot Davis , Postmodern Texts and Emotional Audiences
Philippe Codde , The Jewish American Novel
Deborah Streifford Reisinger , Crime and Media in Contemporary France
Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature , Ed. Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek
Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility
Arianna Dagnino
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright 2015 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dagnino, Arianna, 1963-
Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility / Arianna Dagnino.
pages cm. — (Comparative Cultural Studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55753-706-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61249-375-6 (epdf)
ISBN 978-1-61249-376-3 (epub)
1. Fiction—21st century—History and criticism.
2. Multiculturalism in literature.
3. Literature and transnationalism.
4. Cultural fusion in literature.
5. Comparative literature. I. Title.
PN3352.M85D34 2015
809.3′9355—dc23
2014040755
Cover image: Metamorphosis no. 3 by Stefano Gulmanelli (Milano).
I dedicate Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility to my parents and to Giacomo, Leonardo, Matilde, and Morgana.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One Writing and Transcultural Life
Chapter One Trojanow’s Drive Toward Mobility and Cultural Confluences
Chapter Two Castro, the Other, and the Complexity of Belonging
Chapter Three Baranay’s Transient Life in Writing
Chapter Four Manguel and the Paradox of Cultural Identity
Chapter Five Multiple Dimensions of the Transcultural
Part Two Transcultural Literature in the Age of Multiple Modes of (Post)modernity
Chapter One Global Nomadism, Multiple Modes of (Post)modernity, and a New Cultural Order
Chapter Two Transculture, Transculturality, and Transculturalism in the Twenty-First Century
Chapter Three Transcultural Literature in the Global Ecumene
Chapter Four Transcultural Writers, Creative Transpatriation, and Transcultural Fiction
Chapter Five The “Fuzzy” Nature of Transcultural Novels
Conclusion
Glossary of Concepts for the Study of Transculturality
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
An intimate thank you goes to my husband and companion, scholar Stefano Gulmanelli, with whom I was able to share not only the more prosaic house chores and parental/family responsibilities (thanks for all those school lunch boxes and those carefully prepared dinners!), but also lengthy, stimulating, and at times eye-opening conversations on our respective research theoretical territories. I would also like to offer my thanks to our children, Morgana and Leonardo, for filling our life with laughter and wonder at the end of a long draining day of writing. I would like to thank Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, series editor of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies published by Purdue University Press, for his suggestions and editing. I am grateful to Giancarlo Chiro and Enza Tudini (University of South Australia) and to Sneja Gunew (The University of British Columbia), who contributed to enhancing the quality of my inquiry and the consistency of the overall structure of the work. A special thanks goes also to Diana Glenn (Flinders University) for her help. I thank Inez Baranay, Brian Castro, Alberto Manguel, Tim Parks, and Ilija Trojanow, who allowed me to conduct interviews with them about their life experiences and ways of writing. The interviews not only corroborated and further expanded my initial ideas on transcultural orientations and creative expressions, but also challenged the transfer of their knowledge within the parameters of academic discourse. With the writers’ permission, I have included excerpts of the interviews in various parts of this book. I would also like to thank Dianna L. Gilroy, the copy editor at Purdue University Press, for her careful and accurate work of revision.
I am particularly grateful to all those generous friends and colleagues who, at a time or another, were so kind as to read or discuss sections and whole chapters of the book (either in English or Italian), always providing useful feedback, suggestions, and insightful comments. In particular, I thank Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna), Jane Ball, J. M. Coetzee (University of Adelaide), Dorothy Driver (University of Adelaide), Brian Fox, Simonetta Ghirlanda, Janett Jackson, Russ Jackson, Meredith McAvaney, Kathryn Pentecost (University of South Australia), Gabriella Saba, and Susanna Iacona Salafia (Fatih Unversity). I also thank Ghil’ad Zuckermann (University of Adelaide) for having provided the correct spelling of the Yolŋus’s Aboriginal language. Finally, I thank my parents, my sister, my aunt, and the rest of my family in Liguria, who have always made me feel their warm presence and support even from afar.
Parts of this book have been published previously in learned journals and conference proceedings. In all instances these published articles and papers have since been rewritten and updated. I also thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers of these articles and papers for their interest in and support of my work. In all cases the copyright release of texts published previously are granted, as follows. CLCWeb Comparative Literature and Culture (Purdue University Press), Proceedings of the Annual Conference Cultural Studies Association of Australasia 2011 (University of South Australia), Proceedings of the Border Crossings Conference 2012 at Kangaroo Island (Flinders University), Proceedings of the Intercultural Research: Looking Back, Looking Forward 2014 Symposium of the Centre for Intercultural Language Studies (The University of British Columbia), Transcultural Studies (University of Heidelberg), Transcultural Studies: A Series in Interdisciplinary Research (Charles Schlacks), Transpostcross (University of Bologna), and Transnational Literature Journal (Flinders University).
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