MIGRATION AND IDENTITY (RE)CONSTRUCTION: THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY IN ERNEST J. GAINES’ CATHERINE CARMIER

Résumé de l'article

Grounded on deconstruction, this paper stresses on the changes in migrants’ identity. It assesses the ambivalent impacts of migration on identity (re)formation in Catherine Carmier. For a community that considers migration as a quest for education and employment to improve its life conditions in the plantation, migration may have non expected effects on the identity of characters. They encompass emotional detachment, acculturation, the loss of faith and identity crisis. These facets of the migrant identity set a mood of tensions within the black community. However, migration may foster appraisive identity features. The migrant self-assertiveness informs the way he perceives himself. Migration instills progressive traits on the individual’s identity through interracial love transgression, political commitment, critical awareness, and empowerment. Identity (re)construction often fosters interracial tensions between black and creole people.

COLONIALISM AND BLASPHEMED RACIALIZATION IN JOHN MAXWELL COETZEE’S WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS

Résumé de l'article

This research investigates the postcolonial concept of colonialism and blasphemed racialization in Waiting for the Barbarians by John Maxwell Coetzee. It analyzes the fractured relation between Blacks and Whites during colonization. In fact, colonial era has favored the domination of Whites over Blacks resulting in the blasphemy of Africans’ race and culture. Coetzee intends to demonstrate that colonialism with its discourse and heritage has settled a clear distinction between both races. In so doing, this situation has occasioned Blacks’ misrepresentation in both their culture and race at the profit of Whites. Standing on postcolonial theory, the study reaches the point that John Maxwell Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians is a narrative of colonialism and blasphemed racialization.

POST-MIGRATION BRITISH LITERATURE: AN ANALYSIS OF SPACE AND HYBRIDITY IN HANIF KUREISHI’S THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA (1990)

Résumé de l'article

Black British literature is the space of representation of the migratory flow. It analyses the effect of emigration on literary productions. The present study is an investigation on the second generation of writers with the case of Hanif Kureishi, a writer from the Indian diaspora born in the United Kingdom, who portrays the conditions of Indian immigrants in England. It seeks to scrutinize The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and takes as a starting two different axes based on the works of Homi Bhabha and John Searle. Consequently, Bhabha’s notion of hybridity serves as a theoretical tool to reveal Kureishi’s strategy to minimize the border between the native and the host culture and to resolve diasporic difficulties. John Searle’s illocutionary acts are also used to analyze the discourse of the hybrid characters as well as the impact of space in the creation of a new identity.

BLURRING IDENTITY AND BOUNDARY: CASE STUDY OF JAMES WELCH’S WINTER IN THE BLOOD

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This article explores identity and boundary issues in Native American works of fiction. It focusses on James Phillip Welch’s Winter in the Blood analyzing the central character’s shuffling between Native Americans’ and Whites’ cultures. By means of a postmodern analysis, this article highlights the notions of identity and boundary acquisition, showing on the one hand traditional or cultural identity, and on the other hand, the process of blurring lines between human beings. It comes to the conclusions that boundaries are blurred by means of physical and mental journeys, spirituality and humanism. It also concludes that identity is mutative.

THE AFRICAN WOMEN IN THE ELSEWHERE: AN AFROPOLITAN ANALYSIS OF DARKO’S BEYOND THE HORIZON AND WALKER’S POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY

Résumé de l'article

Globalization catalyses the proliferation of transnational literature across disciplines and the contemporary African and African-American novels are no exception. They develop Afropolitan topics in which emerge new kinds of migrating populations composed of people whose patterns of life encompass both their host and home societies. Their lives cut across national boundaries and bring several societies into a single social field. The article analyses two transnational novels: Beyond the Horizon (1991) written by the Ghanaian novelist Amma Darko, and Possessing the Secret of Joy (2009) written by the African-American novelist Alice Walker. It argues that the African migrant women in the elsewhere (African and African-American novels) overcome oppressions to become Afropolitans. Comparing the two novels through the lens of Afropolitan theory, the article finds out that from being multiple oppressed subjects, the African migrant women find homeliness in the host countries.

INTRACONTINENTAL MIGRATION AND THE AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT: A STUDY OF NOVIOLET BULAWAYO’S WE NEED NEW NAMES

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This paper intends to demonstrate the way movements across national borders within Africa foster the development of the continent. It explores NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel We Need New Names and brings out how the author has imagined such development capacity in the construction of the narrative. The novel, mainly, tells about Africans’ immigration towards western worlds, such as the United States of America and Britain. However, in the process of telling the events, the narrator subtly gives indications pertaining to African intracontinental migration. In this regard, this paper considers characters’ cross-border movements within Africa and uses them as a means of development. This analysis will be achieved based on the theory of narratology. Actually, it lays emphasis on characters, spaces and events to relate migration and continental development.

FOSTER CHILDREN’S IDENTITY ISSUE IN THE CONTEXT OF IMMIGRATION: A CASE STUDY OF THE NEW TRIBE BY BUCHI EMECHETA

Résumé de l'article

This paper analyses a protagonist’s life whose membership inside his family seems to call in question his genuine identity for he is a foster child. This one is stigmatised because of his skin colour and hardly achieves to blossom within society. The goal is to depict the identity crisis experienced by him, how that identity crisis impacted his familial and social integration, and finally how immigration imposed itself to this afro-English boy as solution to clear away all doubts about his personality. With Postcolonial criticism, a deep analysis of foster children’s identity issue in the context of immigration is achieved through the concepts of Adopt, Adapt, and Adept to examine hybridity and cultural polyvalency of the protagonist. Immigration provided a mixed outcome and led to realize the acceptance of the protagonist current identity

BREXIT AND THE DIALECTIC OF THE EUROPEAN SPACE AND IDENTITY IN ANDREW MARR’S HEAD OF STATE

Résumé de l'article

This paper examines the crisis of a common European identity in Andrew Marr’s novel, Head of State. Drawing on Karl Marx’s belief that life is materialistic; the article explores how Britain’s socio-economic crisis triggers the Britons’ animosity toward a common European socio-political identity. Brexit referendum emerged at a moment of economic recession leading to socio-political tensions between the Europhiles and the Eurosceptics in Britain and the European countries. In considering these, the article analyses Marr’s fiction as it echoes British social and political struggles within the European Union project. Specifically, the paper explores how the socio-economic deterioration of the country perpetuates a rejection of a common European political space. This allows for a more materialistic reading of contradictions inside the British state-territory to sort out Brexit vote as dialectical struggles between opposing political economic forces in Marr’s fiction.

NARRATING THE MULTIFORM IDENTITY: MIGRATION AND COSMOPOLITANISM IN HELON HABILA’S TRAVELLERS

Résumé de l'article

This article explores the growing phenomenon of migration of people from former colonies to European countries. The tremendous economic and technological development, in addition to the projected western humanism and generosity constitute the main drives of this massive influx of migrants into Europe. The study is based on Helon Habila’s Travellers (2019), which appears as a postcolonial text that fictionalizes the stories of some Black and Arab migrants who succeed to cross the European borders. In this novel of the category of migrant literature, the narrative puts side by side the migrants’ sad experiences and the supposed humanism promoted through the European concept of cosmopolitanism. In so doing, the author tackles the questions of identity and aspects of racism in the migration policy and practices of European countries.