Transculturalism, diaspora and otherness: the quest for a home in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s americana
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46502/issn.2792-3681/2023.4.8Palabras clave:
otherness, alienation, African diásporas, home and identity, postcolonial and transculturalism.Resumen
This paper aims to re-evaluate the role of otherness, the true keystone of Americanah which invites to wonder if it might not be at the origin of certain limits that appear in transculturalism. The places most likely to welcome transculturalism in Western societies come across as culture places, where dominant norms are challenged to include otherness. This study reveals that transculturality facilitates African Diasporas circulation and delineates a field of identifications with hybrid status. Therefore, hybridity can generate discomfort and a loss of the feeling of being at home. Suffocation, confinement, the disturbingly familiar strangers are all reasons that tarnish transculturalism representations by underlining its limits, which seep into homes that lose ability to offer shelter. The function of home to provide protection is then deterritorialised in relationships or in professional spaces. The analysis suggests that transculturalism stumbling block is not so much otherness than othering, that is to say the imposition of another identity on someone based on appearance, ethnic, cultural background, or sex identity dimensions. Thus, from otherness to othering, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as a transcultural Nigerian female writer, reveals that alienation corrodes transcultural characters and generates positive opening discussions and meetings around new postcolonial relations.
Citas
Adichie, C. N. (2013). Purple Hibiscus, London, Harper Perennial.
Half of a Yellow Sun. (2006). London, Fourth Estate.
Americanah. (2013). London, Fourth Estate.
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2002). (eds), The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literature. London, Routledge.
Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture. London, Routledge.
Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London, Routledge.
Chambers, I. (1994). Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London, Routledge.
Clifford, J. (1992). “Travelling Cultures”, Cultural Studies, Eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler, pp. 96-116, New York, Routledge.
Goyal, Y. (2014) “Africa and the Black Atlantic” Research in African Literatures, 45(3), pp. v-xxv.
Hall, St. (2002). “Political Belonging in a World of Multiple Identities”. In Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, eds. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, pp. 25–31. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Rodriguez-Murphy, E. (2017). “New Transatlantic African Writing: Translation, Transculturation and Diasporic Images in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s the Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah.” Prague Journal of English Stories, 6(1), pp. 93-104.
Vertovec, S. (2009). Transnationalism, London, Routledge.
Descargas
Publicado
Cómo citar
Número
Sección
Licencia
Derechos de autor 2023 Multiverso journal
Esta obra está bajo una licencia internacional Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0.
Copyright
Los autores que publican en esta revista están de acuerdo con los siguientes términos:
Los autores conservan los derechos de autor y garantizan a la revista el derecho de ser la primera publicación donde se presenta el artículo, el cual se publica bajo una Creative Commons Attribution License, que permite a otros compartir el trabajo previo el reconocimiento de la autoría del trabajo y de la publicación inicial en esta revista.
Los autores pueden establecer por separado acuerdos adicionales para la distribución no exclusiva de la versión de la obra publicada en la revista (por ejemplo, situarlo en un repositorio institucional o publicarlo en un libro), con un reconocimiento de su publicación inicial en esta revista.
Esta obra está bajo la licencia:
