Documenting the (Un)Documented: Diasporic Ecuadorian Narratives in Southern/Mediterranean Europe

For several decades, Ecuadorian, U.S. American, and European social scientists have studied Ecuadorian migration to the European Union. Yet little academic research has been devoted to the comparative study of literary and filmic representations of diasporic Ecuadorians. This disparity between social science and literary studies research is especially evident in scholarship published in English, a gap this dissertation proposes to fill. I investigate the discourses, cultural production, representations, and self-representations of diasporic Ecuadorians in Southern/Mediterranean Europe, specifically in Spain and Italy, where the largest diasporic communities of Ecuadorians in the European Union reside. I focus on a selection of works of fiction, poetry, and films, with particular attention given to texts by diasporic Ecuadorians. I argue that some of these recent texts point to a shift in epistemological standpoints, self-representational strategies, and political coalitional projects that differ from previous understandings and representations of the Ecuadorian migrant. I suggest that they gesture toward the narrative of a subject who not only exposes her subjectivities and experiences, but also connects these within larger translocal histories, revealing the global subalternization of migrants and critiquing dominant systems of power. Since the mid-1990s, approximately 1.5 million Ecuadorian women and men from diverse geographical, social, and ethnoracial backgrounds (roughly 10 percent of the total population) have migrated to the European Union, particularly to Southern/Mediterranean Europe. Ecuadorian women often work as caretakers of the elderly, disabled, or the ill, while men work in construction and other manual labor. Unlike previous Ecuadorian migrations to the U.S., this migration was predominantly female and with a higher formal education than that of the average Ecuadorian population. As subalternized, ethnicized, and racialized migrants, Ecuadorians are seldom viewed by mainstream European societies as narrators and inscribers of their own experiences and subjectivities, or as agents of knowledge production and self-representation. I suggest that intercultural projects such as poetry contests, developed by diasporic Ecuadorians in Genoa, have countered certain discursive formations regarding Ecuadorian youth in Italy by fostering their self-presentation as creators and producers of knowledge and culture. The texts analyzed advance the documentation of translocal Ecuadorian narratives in Southern/Mediterranean Europe

A Spaniard in Hertfordshire : the intellectual exile of Arturo Barea

This thesis explores the role of exile in the work of the Spanish Republican Arturo Barea (1897-1957). It suggests that, linked to the movements that exile generates (physical, social and intellectual), the concept of ‘transnational’ can be used as an analytical tool with which to interrogate Barea’s work and its interpretations. It was during his exile in Britain that Barea became a professional writer, a literary critic and a broadcaster for the BBC. He published his autobiographical trilogy The Forging of a Rebel, edited by T.S. Eliot, in London between 1941 and 1946. This work was immediately translated into several languages, but was only printed in Spanish in its Argentinian edition of 1951, and was not published in Spain until 1977. Through a combined reading of the trilogy alongside a larger body of fictional and non-fictional work the thesis offers a detailed historical analysis of the first context of production and reception of Barea’s writing in Britain, focusing on the period of 1938-1945. It highlights the challenges and opportunities of exile as a transnational and cosmopolitan experience, and demonstrates the different ways in which the homeland and the host state intersect in Barea’s work. Barea’s writings are read here as exercises of cross-cultural translation in which Spain, its people and the Spanish Civil War were construed for a British – and later international – public, while Britain, its people and their role in the Second World War were also interpreted for a Latin American audience. This thesis emphasizes the historical importance of the informal intellectual networks, the publishing landscape, and the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ of the BBC as the institutional sites in which Barea developed his work. A transnational and cosmopolitan approach can offer an avenue to analyse Spanish Republican exile cultural products in a wider historical setting

Colonialisms, post-colonialisms and lusophonies: proceedings of the 4th International Congress in Cultural Studies

Colonialismos e pós-colonialismos são todos diferentes, mesmo quando referidos exclusivamente à situação lusófona. Neste contexto, mais do que procurar boas respostas, importa determinar quais as questões pertinentes aos nossos colonialismos e pós-colonialismos lusófonos. Com efeito, problematizar a própria questão é começar por descolonizar o pensamento. Em nosso entender, esta é uma das tarefas candentes no processo de re-imaginação da Lusofonia, que passa, atualmente, pela procura de um pensamento estratégico que inclua uma reflexão colonialista/pós-colonialista/descolonialista. Esta tarefa primeira, e mesmo propedêutica a qualquer construção gnoseológica, de descolonizar o pensamento hegemónico onde quer que ele se revele, não pode deixar de implicar as academias, centros de produção do saber e do conhecimento da realidade cultural, política e social. Neste sentido, descolonizar o pensamento sobre a Lusofonia passará por colocar em causa e instabilizar o que julgamos já saber e ser como ‘sujeitos lusófonos’, ‘países lusófonos’, ‘comunidades lusófonas’. Trata-se, assim, de instabilizar a uniformidade, mas também as diferenças instituídas, que frequentemente não são mais do que um novo género de cânone integrador e dissolvente da diferença. Por outro lado, não podemos deixar de praticar uma atitude vigilante, de cuidado e suspeição, em face do discurso sobre a diferença irredutível, que pode tornar-se (como no passado) na estéril celebração do exótico. Fazer com que a diferença instabilize o que oficialmente se encontra canonizado como ‘diferença dentro do cânone’, implica negociar e re-inscrever identidades sem inverter dualismos. Uma reflexão pós-colonial no contexto lusófono não pode evitar o exercício da crítica às antigas dicotomias periferia/centro; cosmopolitismo/ruralismo, civilizado/selvagem, negro/branco, norte/sul, num contexto cultural de mundialização, transformado por novos e revolucionários fenómenos de comunicação, que têm também globalizado a marginalidade. A tarefa de re-imaginar a Lusofonia implicará necessariamente a deslocação, inversão ou até implosão, do pensamento dual eurocêntrico, obrigando-nos a repensá-la dentro de uma mais vasta articulação entre local e global

Colonialisms, post-colonialisms and lusophonies: Proceedings of the 4th International Congress in Cultural Studies

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A Spaniard in Hertfordshire : the intellectual exile of Arturo Barea

This thesis explores the role of exile in the work of the Spanish Republican Arturo Barea (1897-1957). It suggests that, linked to the movements that exile generates (physical, social and intellectual), the concept of ‘transnational’ can be used as an analytical tool with which to interrogate Barea’s work and its interpretations. It was during his exile in Britain that Barea became a professional writer, a literary critic and a broadcaster for the BBC. He published his autobiographical trilogy The Forging of a Rebel, edited by T.S. Eliot, in London between 1941 and 1946. This work was immediately translated into several languages, but was only printed in Spanish in its Argentinian edition of 1951, and was not published in Spain until 1977. Through a combined reading of the trilogy alongside a larger body of fictional and non-fictional work the thesis offers a detailed historical analysis of the first context of production and reception of Barea’s writing in Britain, focusing on the period of 1938-1945. It highlights the challenges and opportunities of exile as a transnational and cosmopolitan experience, and demonstrates the different ways in which the homeland and the host state intersect in Barea’s work. Barea’s writings are read here as exercises of cross-cultural translation in which Spain, its people and the Spanish Civil War were construed for a British – and later international – public, while Britain, its people and their role in the Second World War were also interpreted for a Latin American audience. This thesis emphasizes the historical importance of the informal intellectual networks, the publishing landscape, and the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ of the BBC as the institutional sites in which Barea developed his work. A transnational and cosmopolitan approach can offer an avenue to analyse Spanish Republican exile cultural products in a wider historical setting

Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West

The twentieth century saw intensive intellectual exchange between Eastern and Central Europe and the West. Yet political and linguistic obstacles meant that many important trends in East and Central European thought and knowledge hardly registered in Western Europe and the US. This book uncovers the hidden westward movements of Eastern European literary theory and its influence on Western scholarship

Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West

The twentieth century saw intensive intellectual exchange between Eastern and Central Europe and the West. Yet political and linguistic obstacles meant that many important trends in East and Central European thought and knowledge hardly registered in Western Europe and the US. This book uncovers the hidden westward movements of Eastern European literary theory and its influence on Western scholarship