Wilson, J. M. (2011) Narrating identities in transit: a poetics of subjectivity. Invited Presentation presented to: Future Postcolonialisms: Comparing, Converting, Queering, Greening / Le postcolonial-en-devenir, Salle Dusanne, Ecole Nationale Supérieure, Paris, 27-28 May 2011. (Unpublished)
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Abstract:
Women traveller writers from the white settler colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand who move between colonial peripheries and metropolitan centres, position themselves outside national boundaries, obliquely representing their relationship to home and host societies. For these cosmopolitans such side stepping of national categories, fosters a sense of belonging in words and fictive spaces. In being accountable to more than one concept of home, more likely to be a ‘cultural traveller or an extraterritorial’ than a national (Elleke Boehmer Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, OUP, 2005, p. 227) the traveller writer offers complex constructions of literary identity, inflected by overlocking and intersecting images of self and other, home and abroad, authenticity and authority.
This paper will refer to New Zealand writing of the 20th century as a case study. Focussing on the work of Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame and Fleur Adcock, it will argue that their representations of journeys and travel constitute a translational ‘third’ space between colony and host society, a place where identity structures can be undone and remade. As cultural agents, they show in their work a continuing renegotiation of the relationship between the white settler society and the metropolitan homeland
Uncontrolled Keywords:
New Zealand, Migration, Women writers, Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, Robin Hyde, Fleur Adcock, the transnation
Subjects:
Creators:
Wilson, J. M.
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date:
28 May 2011
Date Type:
Presentation
Event Title:
Future Postcolonialisms: Comparing, Converting, Queering, Greening / Le postcolonial-en-devenir
Event Dates:
27-28 May 2011
Event Location:
Salle Dusanne, Ecole Nationale Supérieure, Paris
Event Type:
Conference
Language:
English
Status:
Unpublished
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