The neologism designating the “archi-genre” of autofiction, coined by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977 and heavily contested ever since, indicates a genre in which, notwithstanding nominal identity or a correspondence of personal and sociocultural references between author, narrator and protagonist, the latter two differ from the former in their being fictionalized. For this reason, autofiction has been considered a literary genre in between fact and fiction, raising questions about its significance and legitimacy. Moreover, perhaps due to its relatively marginal status within the literary field, it has often been dismissed as a typically feminine narrative practice, inferior to other allegedly more masculine ways of writing. The troubled status of the genre of autofiction can spawn a fruitful reflection on its value in relation to the notion of in-betweenness, where it can be regarded as an empowering tool through which structures of domination are defied. Indeed, the seemingly problematic nature of autofiction makes it particularly suitable to voice concerns about the transcultural status of female colonizers in post/colonial countries. Such an as yet unexplored correlation between form and content is prominently visible in Marie Cardinal’s Au pays de mes racines (1980) and Marguerite Duras’s L’amant (1984). These autofictional novels, in their presenting adult recollections of childhood memories of former colonies such as Algeria and Indochina, portray their narrators as female subjects who find themselves in a liminal space, split between two words and worlds: the colony and the metropole. 

The purpose of this article is to investigate how the hybrid genre of autofiction, which earlier scholarship has tended to mainly define just as a feminine narrative practice, can function as a feminist tool of representation, for in its challenging dominant configurations of knowledge – such as those embodied by the literary genre of autobiography –, it can be related to feminist theories taking issue with patriarchal categorizations and putting forward alternative approaches to the portrayal of women’s subjectivity. The focus is on how this narrative form harmonizes with and serves to better articulate issues of female identity and cultural hybridization, particularly as concerns the power dynamics at stake in Cardinal’s and Duras’s narratives’ cross-cultural contexts. By drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic political project of sexual difference as well as on Michel Foucault’s practice of “subjectivation,” this article argues that the notion of in-betweenness, which underlies both the genre of autofiction itself and the content and structure of Cardinal’s and Duras’s texts, can function as a feminist category of representation of women’s transcultural subjectivity. The relevance of this literary and cultural analysis of the two novels lies in the fact that, by drawing from earlier explorations of Au pays de mes racines’s and L’amant’s respective intertwining between colonial and identity issues, such considerations are pushed further and examined in close relation with the way in which they appear to be mirrored by and in a dialogic relation with the nature of the narrative form of autofiction itself.  

Keywords: Autofiction, post/colonial identity, cultural and genre hybridization, feminist nomadic philosophy, “Subjectivation” 

b1-22

Uncertainty and supposition are features of the essay form that hark back to the its origins. For Montaigne, the essay was a place where thinking happened, where one could question the world and oneself, inviting uncertainty and supposition into the writing process. This Montaignesque writing-through-thinking—or thinking-through-writing—remains an attractive space for the contemporary writer, where poets, novelists and scholars are turning to the essay form for its suppositional qualities.  

At the same time, the characteristics that are so inviting to writers from many backgrounds are also what discourage the contemporary essay from being pinned down. The essay-as-genre has become a catchall for anything that cannot otherwise be slotted neatly elsewhere. David Lazar likens this quality to that other umbrella phrase which is used when things or people that do not easily fit need labelling: “queer.” He argues that “the essay is the queer genre,” where both genre and gender are “difficult” or “impossible” to “categorize by normative standards.”  

This article looks specifically at Maggie Nelson’s book length essay Bluets (2009) to explore the ways in which the essay allows the contemporary writer to traffic the borders between knowing and not-knowing. I suggest that in reading this characteristic of uncertainty and supposition in Bluets, we can think about Nelson’s essay as a queer text. That is, a text which seeks to undermine normative injunctions of conclusiveness, rejecting closure and the essentializing qualities of “a culture frantic for resolution,” to use Nelson’s own words. I suggest that, by inviting uncertainty and supposition, the essay also pushes beyond the fetishization of ambiguity and towards something that lies outside of binaries—knowing and not-knowing, categorization and blurring, essentializing and destabilizing—and, in doing so, goes beyond dominant hegemonic discourses and master narratives, in favor of the queer.  

Keywords:  Essay, queer, Maggie Nelson, uncertainty, supposition 

c1-17

Photography-embedded literature describes literary texts (novels, biographies, memoirs, and poetry collections, among other textual genres) with embedded photographs. In light of the fact that many 20^th- and 21^st century migrant authors who left their countries of origin due to instances of political violence, such as wars, genocides, and colonialism, employ photography-embedded literature, this essay investigates how its’ mixed aesthetic form helps convey their complex and emotionally charged experiences. Focusing on Bosnian-American Aleksandar Hemon’s memoir My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You (2019) and novel The Lazarus Project (2008) this essay argues that by closely and critically exploring this subgenre, photography-embedded literature, we can better understand why this form lends itself to migrant stories and develop novel insights into the relationship between literature and photography, in non-antagonistic or hierarchical terms. Looking at the paratextual, peritextual, and epitextual dimensions of Hemon’s literature by conceptualizing the photographs as being akin to hyperlinks embedding new information and leading readers to scan and search within and outside of the books, reinstates photography in non-essentialist, nonbinary ways. The ways the photographs call on readers to engage with the paratextual and epitextual parts of books, fundamentally alters conventional reading practices. Photography is central to the unfolding of stories, memories, and migrations between these realms cross-temporally. The Lazarus Project and My Parents: An Introduction/ This Does Not Belong to You evoke the past, present, and signal to the future through text-image intersections and transhistorical narratives. This cross-temporal dimension importantly complicates theorizations about photography and migrant literature that situate the medium and author as being geographically and temporally in either the past or the present. Liberated from this limiting context, Hemon’s photography-embedded migrant literature illuminates, through its very form, the complexities of movement during and after political violence and means of conveying those experiences aesthetically.   

Keywords: Photography-embedded literature, Aleksandar Hemon, scanning and searching, Migrant literature, hyperlinks 

d1-25

In her monograph Music and Translation, Lucile Desblache emphasises that the “ability for ‘transcultural mediation’” (Desblache 2019: 61) that music can provide is still often ignored. According to Hawkins (2018: 257), music can serve as a “powerful mediator[...] of culture, blending musical ideas with the spectacle of human agency”. This quotation emphasises clearly that it is the artists who play a crucial role as mediators between different cultures, able to launch transcultural messages across borders. 

The Beatles’ special ‘Englishness’ has been cited again and again as an essential reason for their great success. The British humour of the ‘Fab Four’, which also characterised their interaction with the press, especially in the early phase of their career at the beginning of the 1960s, is mentioned in this context just as much as their Liverpool accent and their publicly displayed love of tea. At the same time, their music was described as the model of a “British pop sound” (Bennett 2000: 192) leading to the “British Invasion” and their songs were even interpreted as a commentary on the particular British way of life. 

However, it is precisely this supposed ‘Englishness’ that already represents a starting point for transcultural action in the Beatles themselves, which on the one hand is reflected in their ironic treatment of stereotypes of their homeland, and on the other hand refers to the British lifeworld, which – for instance, as a country with a long history of immigration – is per se transnationally and transculturally conceived, a fact that is especially true for Liverpool as a port city. This attitude culminates in the turn to Indian music, Eastern sound and instruments as well as a heightened interest in transcendental meditation and the corresponding clothing in the second creative phase of the ‘Fab Four’ from the mid-1960s onwards, who thus help shape and drive an emerging discourse on alternative lifestyles.  

The Beatles’ supposed ‘Englishness’, therefore, becomes the starting point for a transcultural examination of society that replaces a focus on specific national traditions – and, furthermore, contains the potential to raise awareness not only of the society in which we live, but also of the one in which we would like to live. Following Desblache (2019: 316) once more, “music can reflect the past and present but is at its best when imagining the future”. The legacy of the Beatles and the narratives associated with it are therefore more relevant than ever and serve, furthermore, contemporary musicians as a possibility to negotiate transcultural identities via rethinking, relocating and reviving them. 

Keywords: The Beatles, transculturality, Englishness, musical mediation, identity building 

In ihrer Monografie Music and Translation betont Lucile Desblache, dass die „ability for ‘transcultural mediation’“ (Desblache 2019: 61), die Musik leisten kann, immer noch häufig verkannt werde. Dabei könne gerade Musik als „powerful mediator[…] of culture, blending musical ideas with the spectacle of human agency“ fungieren, wie auch Hawkins (2018: 257) hervorhebt – wobei dieses Zitat bereits eindrücklich verdeutlicht, dass es die Künstler:innen sind, die eine ganz entscheidende Rolle als Mediatoren zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen spielen, die über Grenzen hinweg transkulturelle Botschaften lancieren können. 

Für den großen Erfolg der Beatles wurde immer wieder ihre spezielle ‚Englishness‘ als wesentlicher Grund angeführt. Der britische Humor der ‚Fab Four‘, der gerade auch ihren Umgang mit der Presse vor allem in der frühen Phase ihrer Karriere Anfang der 1960er Jahre prägte, findet hierbei genauso Erwähnung wie ihr Liverpooler Akzent und ihre öffentlich zur Schau gestellte Liebe zu Tee. Gleichzeitig wurde ihre Musik als das Modell eines „British pop sound“ (Bennett 2000: 192) bezeichnet, das die „British Invasion“ begründete, und ihre Songs sogar als Kommentar zur spezifisch britischen Lebensart interpretiert.  

Allerdings stellt gerade diese vermeintliche ‚Englishness‘ bereits bei den Beatles einen Ausgangspunkt für transkulturelles Handeln dar, das sich zum einen in ihrem ironischen Umgang mit Stereotypen ihrer Heimat spiegelt, zum anderen Bezug auf die britische Lebenswelt nimmt, die – etwa als Einwanderungsland mit langer Historie – schon per se transnational und transkulturell geprägt ist, was für Liverpool als Hafenstadt noch einmal ganz besonders gilt. Diese Attitüde gipfelt in der Zuwendung zu indischer Musik, östlichem Sound und dessen Instrumenten, genauso wie in einem verstärkten Interesse an transzendentaler Meditation und der entsprechenden Kleidung in der zweiten Schaffensphase der ‚Fab Four‘ ab Mitte der 1960er Jahre, die so den sich manifestierenden Diskurs über alternative Lebensentwürfe mitprägen und vorantreiben.  

Die vermeintliche ‚Englishness‘ der Beatles wird so zum Ausgangspunkt einer transkulturellen Beschäftigung mit Gesellschaft, die eine Fokussierung auf spezifisch nationale Traditionen ersetzt – und darüber hinaus das Potenzial beinhaltet, nicht nur das Bewusstsein für die Gesellschaft zu schärfen, in der wir leben, sondern auch für diejenige, in der wir gerne leben würden. Denn „music can reflect the past and present but is at its best when imagining the future,“ um noch einmal Desblache (2019: 316) zu zitieren. Das Erbe der Beatles und die damit verbundenen Narrativen sind somit aktueller denn je und dienen auch zeitgenössischen Musiker:innen als Möglichkeit, transkulturelle Identitäten auszuhandeln, indem diese neu gedacht, neu lokalisiert und neu gelebt werden. 

Keywords: The Beatles, Transkulturalität, Englishness, Kulturvermittlung, Identitätsbildung 

e1-25

Scholars agree that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the most influential novels from the twentieth century. Recent studies (Cutchins and Perry; Saggini; Parrino) have called for a more interdisciplinary and transmedia approach to Frankenstein’s adaptations. Friedman’s article focuses on Mel Brook’s parodic film adaptation Young Frankenstein (1974) and analyses the latter’s relationship with the target texts through the lens of Iser’s reader-response criticism, which has not yet been applied in studies on film parody. Referring to the paradox of parody (Hutcheon), the article argues that Young Frankenstein does not transgress the authority of gothic horror genre, but, whilst disrupting spectators’ expectations, operates a shift from the abstract mechanisms of genre to a corporeal dimension. Concepts such as dynamic interaction, negation and implied reader allow Friedman to demonstrate that spectators’ meaning construction takes place between degrees of knowledge (Rose) concerning the target films and their dynamic interaction with the gothic genre, which is characterised by an insistence on corporeality. 

Keywords: parody; gothic horror; reader response criticism; Frankenstein; intermediality 

Elisabeth Bekers and VUB students, "On Being a Self-Taught Writer: Sulaiman Addonia in Conversation about Silence is My Mother Tongue " Transcribed by Parham Aledavood