Transculturalism, diaspora and otherness: the quest for a home in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s americana

Autores/as

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46502/issn.2792-3681/2023.4.8

Palabras 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.

Biografía del autor/a

Kouadio Lambert N’Guessan, Université Alassane Ouattara, Ivory Coast.

Maître Assistant Department of English – Université Alassane Ouattara, Ivory Coast.

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.

Publicado

2023-03-31

Cómo citar

N’Guessan, K. L. . (2023). Transculturalism, diaspora and otherness: the quest for a home in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s americana. Multiverso Journal, 3(4), 93–108. https://doi.org/10.46502/issn.2792-3681/2023.4.8

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