Constructing diasporic identities in Austin Clarke's The Origin of Waves

Title: Constructing diasporic identities in Austin Clarke's The Origin of Waves
Variant title:
  • Construction des identités diasporiques dans The Origin of Waves d'Austin Clarke
Source document: The Central European journal of Canadian studies. 2018, vol. 12-13, iss. [1], pp. 79-92
Extent
79-92
  • ISSN
    1213-7715 (print)
    2336-4556 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
The paper examines how traumatic experiences shape diasporic subjects' identities in a host country and examines how other types of memory influence the construction of identity in a diaspora. By way of a close analysis of The Origin of Waves, a 1997 novel written by Canadian writer Austin Clarke, who was born in Barbados, the author shows that homeland experience is important for the formation of diasporic identity as life in a new environment play itself out against the memory of another environment. The experience is problematized when it is marked by trauma which results in a more complex and difficult integration in a host country. The paper shows how Clarke's novel challenges the fixed self and how the frozen and rigid identity becomes a matter of dynamic construction and self-fashioning through the process of migration.
Cet article examine comment les expériences traumatiques façonnent les identités des sujets diasporiques dans le pays d'accueil, ainsi que les autres types de mémoires qui influencent la construction de l'identité en diaspora. En analysant minutieusement le texte du roman The Origin of Waves, l'auteur montre que l'expérience acquise dans le pays d'origine est importante pour la formation de l'identité diasporique parce que la vie dans un nouvel environnement se déroule parallèlement à la mémoire de l'autre environnement. L'expérience devient problématique quand elle est marquée par un traumatisme qui a pour conséquence une intégration plus compliquée et plus difficile dans le pays d'accueil. La présentation de l'identité diasporique que Clarke a proposée dans son roman représente un exemple de transformation du soi diasporique, fait d'origines multiples, en un soi fluide.
References
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