AVALOS ANA LAURA
Congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Inhabiting Spatial Fissures: Marginal Subjects and Thirdspaces
Lugar:
Paris
Reunión:
Congreso; XXth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association; 2013
Institución organizadora:
L'Université de Paris Sorbonne
Resumen:
The
concept of space has undergone a significant transformation in the last
decades. Its definition has been expanded to consider it not merely as a
vacuum, geographical area where events take place, but rather as a complex
arena of interrelated layers of meanings, in which social practices are
performed and identities asserted. Thus, and following the thoughts and ideas
of theorists Edward Soja, Henri Lefevre and Michel Foucault, we consider space
as a social construction which is always politically contested and in which
meanings are inscribed. It is in these social constructs where subjects
interrelate and perform their practices, and in which the struggles for power
are materialized. Our focus of analysis will--hence--be on the construction of
(alternative) spaces of resistance and subversion of the given, hegemonic
social order. In our work, we set out to
explore the construction of spaces of resistance in Annie Prouxl's "Brokeback
Mountain" (1999) and Edwidge Danticat's "The Bridal Seamstress" and "The
Funeral Singer" (2004). Our aim is to carry out an in-depth analysis of the
processes of construction of different hegemonic social orders represented in
the stories, as well as the counter-spaces which result of these and the
different strategies in relation to spatiality that the characters employ in
order to subvert these given social orders. We propose the following working
hypothesis: within any hegemonic society marginal subjects construct
alternative sites which try to counter the impositions and restraints on their
practices. These spaces are varied in terms of Firstspace, that is in their
materiality, and Secondspace, that is in their conception. In the works
analyzed, Thirdspace is constructed in the wilderness, in enclosed, urban
spaces and in the some of the characters' perpetual nomadism, which highlights
the dynamic nature of the lived space.
