The 'Legend' of Alekos Doukas: A critical counter reading

Abstract

This paper examines how the writer Alekos Doukas (1900–1962) has been read and interpreted in later years as a migrant intellectual and socialist. I argue that Doukas has become a figure of myth through a process of oral and written transmission. He is invariably represented as a unitary socialist subject who encapsulates the experience and revolutionary consciousness of a migrant collectivity. Many writers refer to Doukas’ life and experiences through a quite literal reading of his postwar novels. How do we account for the reading of his fiction as fact? We need to explore the function of myth and its discursive shaping of migrant narratives of the past and present