View source for Writing Exile, Migration and Diaspora

In the last decade increased attention has been directed toward
cultural practice that crosses and re-crosses cultural borderlands. Interest in such writing
derives in part from the current climate of geographical mobility and instability. But it also
derives from debates around identity politics and the privileging of ‘authentic’ voices. Tales of
exile and migration offer the opportunity to think differently about culture, memory,
language, and nation. They cultivate an appreciation for the translatability of languages and
cultures as well as for the untranslatability of certain forms of cultural specificity. They also
imagine forms of communities not bound by conventional commonalities, those of territory,
history, language and religion. The class takes its departure from the literal meaning of trans-
latio, “change from one place, position or condition to another.” It examines contemporary art
and literature that crosses cultures with focus on the representation of the complex dynamics
of cross-cultural exchanges and interactions, of language and communication, and culture
and human rights. What kind of translation takes place under the specific conditions of exile
and migration ? What forms of immersion, conversion or other possibilities emerge? How
does the reader of cross-cultural creative production experience ‘culture’? How does cross-
cultural work resist normative reading ideologies?

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