A Narrator's Testimony Between Reading, Writing, and Displacements At other times I read transversly on the planisphere and choose authors from Eastern Europe, poeti- cally roughly (original) (raw)
Related papers
Unfolding Processes of Transversal Writing
2019
This issue of Writingplace Journal, Reading(s) and Writing(s), focuses on the complex process of writing itself, and in particular on the question of reading and responding to texts. By presenting not only resulting texts, but discreet readings of works in process integrated with the discussions that unfold, the issue reveals complex modes of writing that move between the scholarly and the fictional. It draws attention to the questions of authorial voice, the voice of the reader, and the voice of the possible protagonists of the text, even if this as an object, space or indeed, place. If the authors could be said to engage in various acts of ‘writing place’, as per this journal’s general thematic focus, what kinds of places do they bring into existence? Furthermore, which modes of writing are deemed most appropriate in order to create both evocative and critical accounts of places?
Raw Tales: An Anthropology of Postcolonial Writers in Exile
Raw Tales: An Anthropology of Postcolonial Writers in Exile, 2020
Inspired by Polish literary scholar Anna Łebkowska's writing, this thesis is a work of anthropology that focuses on the specific population of writers from postcolonial nations who live in exile in the land of their former colonizers. I include an original literary translation of Cuentos Crudos, a collection of short stories by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, as part of a larger conversation about the important work translation has in bringing awareness to the unfortunate circumstances which brought these writers to “seek refuge in the metropolis.” By focusing on the destabilization of postcolonial nations following their independence, the problem of postcolonial national identity in language and literature, the “writer as anthropologist,” and how literature and translation can be used as a powerful medium of resistance and activism against oppressive regimes, I hope to encourage readers and academics to read the work of writers before “speaking for” their subjects. In short, this thesis serves as a space to reflect on the importance of academic and literary works to effectuate change and encourage us all to become more interdisciplinary in our studies and use our voices to highlight the work of marginalized and vulnerable people.
In Parallel With My Actual Diary: On Re-writing an Exile
Life Writing, 2021
How can the production of migratory texts provide social and political agency for migrants? My starting point for investigating connections between literary acts of resistance and literal acts of resistance is in fact multiple: the discontinuous pathways of exile. In re-drafting Walter Benjamin’s seven-year exile from Paris to Lourdes, Lourdes to Marseilles, Marseilles to Port-Vendres, Port- Vendres to Portbou, ‘In Parallel With My Actual Diary’ also reevaluates the xenophobic culture of the European cities that we each traverse, bridging gaps between 1940 and today to shed light on the often undocumented microhistories of migration and the dead end of diaspora: the largest human displacement since the Second World War. In my endeavour to converge past and present, I collage letters written by Benjamin during his exile; scenes of departure culled from interviews, photographic evidence, and testimonies; reportage of political and social upheaval in Europe in the summer of 2017; and finally, my own letters, written to Walter as I read him back. The goal of re-writing Benjamin’s exile as epistolary essay is to engender empathy, while forming parallels between his piecemeal, processual, itinerant (and unfinished) Arcades Project and the migratory – collaborative, anonymous, transmedial – texts produced by displaced persons today.
Writing about Writing Amidst the End of Worlds: An Invitation
Post-Global Aesthetics: Twenty-First Century Latin American Literatures and Cultures. Edited by Gesine Müller and Benjamin Loy, 2022
Pourquoi ne cesse-t-elle pas d’écrire?—Amid a global pandemic, unprecedented environmental catastrophes, feminicides and genocides, rampant socioeconomic inequalities, and an increasing number of forced displacements, Blanchot’s question returns with the wit of a provocation, if not with the weight of an accusation. The accusatory tone may prevail in light of the ever-growing number of writers—critics and literary practitioners alike—who insist not only upon writing, but upon writing about writing. The premise of my essay is that the defense of both literary practice and criticism depends largely on the robustness of our answer to the question: “Why keep writing [about writing] literature?” I will rehearse a response to this inquiry by looking at two 21st-century Latin American novels: Rodrigo Hasbún’s El lugar del cuerpo and Conceição Evaristo’s Sabela. Both Hasbún and Evaristo’s works feature fictional writers who reflect upon their writing processes whilst their own sense of worldliness crumbles: in the case of El lugar del cuerpo, the protagonist explores what writing might mean from the perspective of a "yo" shattered by the experiences of migration and assault; in Sabela, the narrator explores the potency and the perils of transcribing the collective memory of an environmental catastrophe which threatens her community’s ancestral bases. Although the characters’ reflections are catalyzed by scarring circumstances, writing is not rendered as the suture of trauma or as a means to an end, but as an always-ongoing process whose value lies precisely in the pliancy and unexpectedness of its itinerary. Furthermore, writing is depicted not as a solitary, self-enclosed activity, but as a porous, erratic, and transformative praxis sensitive to its surroundings. From the characters’ viewpoint, to write means to venture into an embodied experience radically open to rather than severed from the ecology that envelops it. I argue that this permeability and its unpredictable outcomes are most welcome in a (post-) global cultural economy which, amidst the corrosion of its material grounds, still feeds on the reification of the self and on the commodification of well-contoured identities. In this context, following the trails of permeable, open writing trajectories might not bring about the fascinating absence de temps or the kairotic disruption of the political, but it may help us grasp the texture of subjectivities in process, the dynamics of worlds in ruins, and the potentialities of ecologies in the making.
Exile: Paradoxes of Loss and Creativity
British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1998
Since the mid-nineteenth century, millions of people have migrated to Latin America, choosing to endure multiple losses in the anticipation that life in the`New World' would offer a positive alternative to the limited opportunities in their countries of origin. Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral captures the complex but essentially optimistic essence of this kind of migration: I am two. One looks back, The other turns to the sea. The nape of my neck seethes with goodbyes And my breast with yearning. (Akhtar 1995, p. 1066) However, in the past several decades, another migration has taken place as hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been forced from their homelands into exile in a flight from the terrors of political repression. Exile is a specific kind of migration, without yearning and shorn of hope and aspiration. Refugees are journeying from, not toward, something, and what they leave behind nags at the psyche, wedding it to the past. My city-Los Angeles-is a city of exiles, where since the late seventies large numbers of Central Americans have been forced into a continual exodus from civil war and military dictatorship. They bring with them a legacy of social trauma that infuses their experience of arrival in the United States with a profound pessimism about the past and about what lies ahead in the uncharted future. Exiled poet Etelvina Astrada describes the conditions that have driven her and other refugees from their countries: The hordes came, Created darkness And terror, the hunt, goon squads kidnappings walls interrogations olive green
2013
When I aim to learn about a civil war or a revolution in a part of the world I know little about, my first impulse is to find a novel. Only afterwards do I compile a professional bibliography. In the language of this volume, I initially bypass the mode of worlding constituted by social science and by Western IR. Instead, I turn first to the transgressive worlding of fiction. How might this make sense even for a professional academic? Reading a novel and reading a professional article call for different dispositions. We are suspicious, alert and guarded when reading a scientific account. In contrast, while reading a literary narrative our "guard" is down. What raises our guard?
2015
Using James Carey’s notion of “historical consciousness,” this article conducted a historical analysis on how Robert F. Williams, a US-born civil rights activist and journalist, negotiated debates about race, racism, and class conflict while living in exile in Cuba and China during the 1960s. The author examined editorial coverage on Cuba and China published in Williams’ Crusader between 1961 and 1969. An analysis of this newsletter highlights the existence and importance of a news outlet that has received little attention in histories on black journalism. It reveals the insights, contradictions, and contentions that are present in black journalists’ alternative media texts published from abroad. Carey’s notion of “historical consciousness” is helpful for understanding how black journalists’ lived experiences and perceptions have emerged from the media texts they produced. These alternative journalism texts reveal how public debates about race, racism, and class conflict have evolved as black journalists have operated across national borders. This article, therefore, contributes to scholarship on the relationship between black journalism and transnationalism by examining specific conceptualizations of race and class politics across various contexts.