Dislocating culture, relocating identity: literary formations of the multiplied self in the works of Roberto Bolano, Ben Okri, and Suheir Hammad

dc.contributor.advisorBallengee, Jennifer R., 1968-
dc.contributor.authorAbuelhiga, Soraya J.
dc.contributor.departmentTowson University. Department of Humanities
dc.date.accessioned2015-12-17T19:19:17Z
dc.date.available2015-12-17T19:19:17Z
dc.date.issued2013-06-19
dc.date.submitted2013-05
dc.description(M.A.) -- Towson University, 2013.
dc.description.abstractIn this thesis I examine identity within the current context of globalization as both an individual and a collective construction using the works of three cross-cultural and transnational authors. By analyzing the roles of language, nationality, and ethnicity in both complementing and complicating notions of identity, I explore how these authors affirm, challenge, and transform their cultural identities through individual artistic expression. My larger argument about personal and social identity as it relates to questions of nationalism and belonging attempts to reconcile seemingly paradoxical definitions of self and culture. The thesis is also an extension of and an intervention into Postcolonial Studies, since it addresses the discipline's theoretical shortcomings and problematic absences. Lastly, I examine the sociopolitical stakes of pluralizing identity, analyzing how reconstructing the self as multilocal can, by extension, multiply individual affinities thereby radicalizing conceptions external to but closely associated with the self, namely home, citizenship, and patriotism.
dc.description.tableofcontentsWarring world(s), conflicting selves -- Lost and found (and lost again) in Latin America: the poetics and politics of multiplying identities in Roberto Bolano's The savage detectives -- To wander and to wonder: reimagining the world and reclaiming the self in Ben Okri's Astonishing the gods -- "Women walking heavy / brown worlds in her face": global(ized) identities and universal patriotism in the poetry of Suheir Hammad -- Towards (and beyond) a new "home."
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.format.extentviii, 114 pages
dc.genretheses
dc.identifierdoi:10.13016/M2W12T
dc.identifier.otherTSP2013Abuelhiga
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/1956
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofTowson University Archives
dc.relation.ispartofTowson University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
dc.relation.ispartofTowson University Institutional Repository
dc.rightsCopyright protected, all rights reserved.
dc.titleDislocating culture, relocating identity: literary formations of the multiplied self in the works of Roberto Bolano, Ben Okri, and Suheir Hammad
dc.typeText
dcterms.accessRightsThere are no restrictions on access to this document. An internet release form signed by the author to display this document online is on file with Towson University Special Collections and Archives.

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