In-between Spaces as Spaces of Dialogue in the Italophone and Francophone Contemporary Novel
Prof. Dr. Barbara Kuhn
«Zwischen-las-lenguas is where I stand» (Camille de Toledo)
While the research of the past decades, when looking at post(-)colonial literatures, often focused on the question of belonging, or, more specifically, on a belonging that has become questionable – be it in the sense of a lack of, or a loss of belonging, be it, complementarily, in the sense of a multiplication through “multiple” or “moving” belongings, emphasizing in both cases above all the moment of instability, i.e. the act of questioning –, the research interest pursued here, without negating such questioning, is rather directed to the question of dialogicity in contemporary Italian- and French-language novels and narratives (understood essentially as texts emerging since the turn of the millennium, which does not completely exclude considering narrative texts of the end of the 20th century).
If the novel is fundamentally characterized by such dialogicity, which, especially since the late reception of Bakhtin’s works on the poetics of the novel, can be considered as widely agreed upon, this research project aims at analyzing what can still rather generally be called the dialogue of cultures. This of course by no means excludes the question of (non-)belonging, which manifests itself, for instance, in the perception of the various facets of the “foreign”: foreign regions, foreign people and being foreign, in the sense of the anthropologist Michel Agier and the philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels. And yet, as the reading of narrative texts – especially from the aforementioned period – suggests, beyond the question of belonging(s) and in a less subject-centered perspective, it is the coexistence, juxtaposition and opposition of cultural imprints that seems to be spelled out and acted out there in manifold variations.
In the context of this project the focus lies on that “dialogue of cultures” which characterizes the francophone and italophone contemporary novel on multiple textual levels and in many different forms and shapes. According to our working hypothesis, it is precisely this dialogue in and with the texts that allows the emergence of productive interspaces, which are neither minimized through a harmonizing perspective; nor – contrary to the thesis of Leslie A. Adelson in her manifesto Against Between – do they block the texts and their authors in an in-between, preventing the possibility of an actual arrival at some point. Accordingly, the goal of the project – in this provisional and very open formulation – is to re-read, to make re-readable these in-between spaces as spaces certainly not without conflicts, without resistances; that is, as eminently dialogical spaces.
Project-related publications:
«Aufbrechende Geschichten, Aufbrechen durch Geschichten – Das Meer, das Erzählen und die Erinnerung in Tu, mio von Erri de Luca und Tra due mari von Carmine Abate», in: Aufbrüche. Für Andreas Lob-Hüdepohl. Heiner Böttger / Gabriele Gien / Thomas Pittrof (Hg.). Eichstätt: Eichstaett Academic Press 2011, 227-245.
«‹Glückliches Babel». Vielsprachige Bilder oder: Vom Lob der Torheit, in vielen Zungen zu reden», in: Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 250.1 (2013), 85-111.
«‹Demain j’inviterai un nouveau ‘moi’›. Das Ich, sein Porträt und die Zeit in den Autoporträts von Bobin, Toussaint und NDiaye», in: Selbst-Bild und Selbst-Bilder. Autoporträt und Zeit in Literatur, Kunst und Philosophie. Ed. by Barbara Kuhn. Paderborn: Fink 2016, 335-361.
«‹La nostra casa la portiamo con noi›: zum Widerstreit von Diaspora und Heterotopie in Madre piccola von Cristina Ali Farah und La mia casa è dove sono von Igiaba Scego», in: Italienisch. Zeitschrift für italienische Sprache und Literatur 81 (2019), 51-81.
«Grenzgänge. Einleitende Überlegungen» [gemeinsam mit Ursula Winter], in: Grenzen. Annäherungen an einen transdisziplinären Gegenstand. Ed. by Barbara Kuhn / Ursula Winter. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2019, 7-30.
«Norm oder Hybridität – Hybridität als Norm? Einleitende Überlegungen» [gemeinsam mit Dietrich Scholler], in: Italienische Literatur im Spannungsfeld von Norm und Hybridität. Übergänge – Graduierungen – Aushandlungen. Ed. by Barbara Kuhn and Dietrich Scholler. Frankfurt a.M. [u.a.]: Peter Lang 2021, 7-26.
«Zwischen Räumen – zwischen Zeiten. Das italofrankophone Albanien in Romanen von Ornela Vorpsi», erscheint in: Letteratura come ponte? Littérature comme pont? Literatur als Brücke? Migrazione e letteratura – Literatur und Migration. A cura di / Ed. by Barbara Kuhn and Marita Liebermann. Roma: Viella, forthcoming 2022.