Fictional worlds, political borders: exilic identities in postcolonial and post-communist literature

Anca Baicoianu (University of Bucharest)

Email: anndiaconu@yahoo.com

 

ABSTRACT:

The aim of this paper is to tackle the experience of displaced selfhood and dislocated knowledge as it is described in the (non-)fictional works of Salman Rushdie and Dubravka Ugrešić. My main point is to argue that such an experience not only has enduring effects at a narrative level, but it is also typical of a new Weltanschauung reinforced by the specific relationships migrant sensibility establishes with the world, with itself and its significant others. The in-between situation the two novelists describe and assume – and which I designate by the term “critical belonging” – can be viewed both as a literary option and a political standpoint, and my analysis will focus on its implications for contemporary culture and cultural theory.