Mapping transnational spaces of contemporary Europe: A look at the post-2004 fiction by Polish migrant authors

Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004 is commonly regarded as a watershed in the history of Polish emigration. The massive inflow of Poles to the EU countries, most notably the United Kingdom, has been amply analysed from the perspective of sociology, economics, and psychology. Simultaneously, the experience of migration and the changes it brings about has attracted the attention of those Polish-born authors who themselves inhabit transnational European spaces, and whose works, featuring migrant characters, are now analysed from different critical perspectives: postcolonial/postcommunist, imagological, and feminist, to name but a few. In this paper, I will focus on three such authors who fictionalise migration in their works while at the same time partaking in the cultural in-betweenness that transnational movement entails: Grażyna Plebanek, A.M. Bakalar, and Agnieszka Dale. My proposition is that by portraying contemporary (Polish) migrants, their works reveal various reconfigurations inherent in the experience of leaving one’s homeland for the host country, with its idiosyncratic, culture-specific features and more universal patterns of integration, or lack thereof. In doing so, these works also reflect upon contemporary Europe and the way in which selfhood and otherness are (mis)represented and enacted in a variety of settings, ranging from the micro context of an individual, through romantic and family relationships, transnational workplace, and even the dystopian post-human spaces of the Europe of the future. As they map the experience of migration in the 21st century, these works dramatize tensions within contemporary European spaces, where one’s gender, ethnicity, and/or provenance affect inter-human relations, challenging and disrupting the official European narrative of “united in diversity.”Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

“Constructing selfhood and otherness in the East-West context"

Since his debut in 2002, Gary Shteyngart, a Russian-American author of Jewish extraction has not only garnered popularity among readers, but also inspired critical interest from reviewers and scholars. While Shteyngart’s talent for satire and his idiosyncratic, fast-pace style of writing undoubtedly account for his popular success, the critics are invariably drawn to the thematic threads that drive his first three novels and bloom in his latest autobiographical work. Among these, there is construction of immigrant identity on the threshold of three cultures, the search for and the development of the writerly voice, and the representation of selfhood and otherness within the East-West context. Accordingly, in this paper I will address these main threads within Shteyngart’s works, focusing particularly on the second one. Drawing on imagology, I will situate Shteyngart’s body of work at the intersections between identity and culture, in order to analyse the role of emotional geographies and cultural maps in his development as a three-culture writer.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Under Bech’s Eyes: Emotional Geographies of the European East in John Updike’s Short Stories

John Updike‘s short stories about Henry Bech‘s diplomatic adventures in the European East have been analysed mainly in the context of the Cold-War balance of power and Updike‘s ambivalent attitude to communist Russia. While the hard-boiled politics constitute the backdrop of Bech‘s cultural mission, the three stories which I discuss in this essay entertain tensions between the official and the personal, which in turn shape the protagonist‘s representations of Eastern European others. Accordingly, by combining imagology with elements of geocriticism and affect studies, this essay explores how cultural patterns of perceiving alterity are intertwined with emotions to produce Bech‘s emotional geographies of the European East, which in mapping the other reflect back on and consolidate Bech‘s American self.Los relatos cortos de John Updike sobre las aventuras diplomáticas del escritor Henry Bech en el Este de Europa han sido estudiados principalmente en el contexto de la Guerra Fría y de la ambivalente actitud de Updike hacia la Rusia comunista. Mientras que la dura política constituye el telón de fondo de la misión cultural de Bech, en los tres relatos analizados existen tensiones entre lo oficial y lo personal que a su vez nutren la imagen del otro. Así pues, en este ensayo se combina la imagología con elementos de geocrítica y los estudios del afecto, para explorar cómo las percepciones culturales se entrelazan con las emociones, produciendo las geografías emocionales del Este Europeo, que, al trazar la imagen del otro, reflejan y consolidan la identidad norteamericana de Henry Bech.Universidad de MálagaMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación FFI2017-86417-

"A Journey into History: Eastern Europe as a Liminal Landscape in Joyce Carol Oates' Short Stories"

This paper approaches a selection of Joyce Carol Oates’ short stories about the post-war Eastern Europe from the perspective of liminality. In the stories, Oates takes her readers for a tour of a world that no longer exists, exploring, as the title of the collection suggests, the Last Days (1984) of Eastern Europe in the grip of communism—the world divided by history and politics, where the personal has become enslaved by the political. In anthropology, the adjective “liminal” refers to the middle stage in a tripartite structure of rite of passage developed by a French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep. Those passing through a liminal phase are separated from the well-known and familiar and divested of their habitual thinking, feeling and acting. Meanwhile, they are “alternately forced or encouraged to think about their society, their cosmos, and the powers that generate and sustain them” (Turner 105). Therefore, liminality implies a deep transformation of the subject who is supposed to emerge from the rite not only equipped with fresh knowledge but also as a new being. In recent years, the concept has proved to offer a valuable tool for studying literature in terms of both form and content. In this paper, I propose to read Oates’ protagonists’ encounters with Eastern Europe as liminal in nature. I suggest that by travelling behind the Iron Curtain the Americans become immersed in a kind of rite of passage which makes them, at least for a while, forgo the world as they know it and enter a liminal phase charged both with dangers and possibilities. In consequence, the European capitals featured in the stories, Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest, become sites of personal refection, inner conflict, and even physical and mental transformation. At the same time, Oates gives her readers a taste of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain, juxtaposing the Eastern and the Western in a poignant, if at times stereotypical manner. In more general terms, this paper hopes to demonstrate that liminality provides a valid framework to study the way Eastern Europe functioned in the American imaginary, more as a mental concept rather than a specific physical region.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Eastern Europe as a Liminal Space in the Life and Fiction of Philip Roth

In the present paper, the concept of liminality is applied to study the portrayal and significance of the post-war Eastern Europe, and Czechoslovakia in particular, in the life and fiction of one of the best contemporary American authors, Philip Roth. Liminality is an anthropological concept that refers to the transitional phase of a rite of passage. It is characterized by “ambiguity and paradox, a confusion of all customary categories” (Turner 97). At the same time, this apparent lack of structure has transformative and creative properties, and may bring about novel configurations and possibilities. The concept has gained well-deserved popularity beyond anthropology proper. Among others, it has been applied to explore theatre and literature. More recently, scholars in political and social studies have recognized its potential for studying large-scale social and political movements and transformations. Both communism and post-communism have been analysed from the perspective of liminality. Furthermore, some scholars conceptualized the condition of post-war Eastern Europe as liminal. Given liminality’s potential for illuminating the two major strands of this paper: literature and politics, I analyze the communist Prague in Philip Roth’s The Prague Orgy (1985) as a liminal space that forces the protagonist, a successful American novelist Nathan Zuckerman, to face and revise his own preconceptions of the place and himself. By sending Zuckerman behind the Iron Curtain and confronting him with the native authors whose works have been banned by the regime, Roth poses a more universal question about the nature of literature and the function of writer. Additionally, I resort to Philip Roth’s biography to explore the writer’s personal connection with “the Other Europe.” I am especially interested in the author’s travels to Czechoslovakia between 1972 and 1977, and the way they affected his personal and creative life. As this paper attempts to demonstrate, Roth’s and Zuckerman’s Czechoslovak experience is liminal in character and as such endowed with transformative and generative potential.Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Mapping Fear and Potentiality in American Cold-War Narratives of Eastern Europe

"Mapping Fear and Potentiality in American Cold-War Narratives of Eastern Europe" analyses literary representations of Eastern European capitals under communism in the fiction of prominent American authors, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Philip Roth, who travelled behind the Iron Curtain between the 1960s and 1980s.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

‘A Feast for the [Cold-War] Imagination’: Liminal Eastern Europe in the Writings of John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth

Inspired by the well-established trope of Eastern Europe’s in-betweenness, this article uses the notion of liminality to explore the images of Eastern Europe during the Cold War in the works of three American authors: John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth. Not only do these works map Eastern Europe as liminal in the imagological sense of the term, that is, as oscillating between competing narratives of otherness and familiarity; empathy and hostility; the East and the West, but also the very experience of venturing behind the Iron Curtain is charged with potentiality: the Eastern-European cityscape becomes the contact zone between cultures and the locus of self-discovery for the American characters. The resultant imaginative geography is at once contemporary and allochronic; political and personal, as it reiterates the Cold War balance of power while at the same time recycling existing representations of the area and reflecting the authors’ sensibilities.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga

Understanding the Other Europe: Philip Roth's Writings on Prague

El objetivo de este trabajo es explorar la representación y el significado de la praga de la posguerra en la obra de uno de los más destacados autores norteamericanos contemporáneos, philip roth. La ciudad natal de kafka es la localidad de the prague orgyThe aim of this essay is to explore the representation and significance of post-war prague in the works of one of the finest contemporary american authors, philip roth. Kafka's hometown is the locale of the prague orgy (1985) and one of david kepesh's st

Weed-ing the Roots: Constructing Immigrant Identity in A.M. Bakalar’s Madame Mephisto (2012)

Poles are one of the three largest non-UK born ethnic groups in all countries and most regions of the United Kingdom. Since Poland’s accession to the European Union in May 2004, thousands of Poles have come to the UK in search of better job prospects and higher standards of living. For many of them London has been the ultimate destination, promising not only a booming job market but also embodying “a modern, transcultural metropolis” (Plesske and Rostek 1). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Polish migrant experience in the UK and London in particular has found its way into fiction. One example is A.M. Bakalar’s debut novel Madame Mephisto (2012), advertised as the voice of the new wave of Polish immigration and the first novel to be written in English by a Polish female author since Poland joined the EU in 2004. This paper focuses on the novel’s protagonist, a thirty-year-old Pole named Magda, and the way she constructs her immigrant identity through defying her Polishness and taking the opportunities London offers to an extreme degree. By becoming a ruthless cannabis dealer, Magda asserts her independence and challenges the stereotype of a docile Polish female for whom the family and religion are of utmost importance. At the same time, she perpetuates other stereotypes related to gender, ethnicity and, in a broader perspective, the conceptual categories of East and West. In contrast to more traditional migrant fiction, it is the protagonist’s homeland rather than the British “other” that seems to be the source of Magda’s emotional malaise. By analyzing the novel as well as several interviews with the author and the book’s reception both in Poland and in the UK, this paper inquiries into the nature of contemporary migrant experience as negotiated through fiction. It also poses questions about what it means to integrate and whether severing ties with one’s native culture is necessary to achieve it.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Producing (In)hospitality: A Post-Brexit perspective

This paper is based on the premise that hospitality “does not just take place in space, but rather produces certain spaces as more or less welcoming, more or less hospitable” (Lynch et al. 25). In other words, hospitality’s spatial dimension, which has been amply analysed in travel and tourism-related scholarship, is intertwined with a social one (Lashley et al.): hospitality determines who and on what basis merits welcome into a given space. In this paper, this generative aspect of hospitality is explored in the context of Brexit, which I read as an institutionalised framework for dictating and policing attitudes towards non-British others, and thus reframing the notion of hospitality at multiple levels. To understand this major socio-political shift in cultural terms, I tune in to the voices of those European authors who have been made to reconsider their place in the UK as a result of Brexit: UK-based migrant authors of Polish origin, Agnieszka Dale and A.M. Bakalar. Focusing on the writers’ reactions to Brexit, both narrative and non-fiction, I explore the notion of hospitality from their perspective as well-integrated citizens whose status as “white others” has been brought to the fore by the advent of Brexit, in an attempt to determine not just the impact that the rupture with Europe has exerted on their sense of belonging to Britain, but also its consequences for their private and professional lives. In more general terms, I wish to reflect on how the socio-political and cultural change in British-European relations, which Brexit has sanctioned, has been impacting European migrants’ perceptions of British hospitality and, more importantly, interpersonal relations in social spaces of the UK.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec