Miten romaanilaji sääntelee vapautta?

Karibialainen kirjallisuus ja paikoiltaan siirtynyt kehitysromaani

• Kaisa Ilmonen Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74757

Abstract

Liberties Regulated by the Novel Genre? Caribbean Literature and the Dislocation of the Bildungsroman.

This article examines the applications of Western bildungsroman in Caribbean postcolonial context. While bildungsroman arose as a medium for representing the individuation of modern subject, it is also intrinsically bound with Western colonial cultural context. The article examines the paradox included in the genre: The genre is used to represent the de-colonizing processes of identity construction but the medium itself is imbued with the very models of identity subjugating the depicted as “Other”.

Furthermore, the article discusses the logic of dislocation in the context of bildungs¬roman genre. What happens to the genre if it is transferred into a cultural context other than the conditions that led to its emergence? Many Caribbean authors have used the bildungsroman genre subversively in order to represent the process of identity construction in the postcolonial context. Several particularities of these novels are analyzed in the article, such as the more collective and communal nature of the subjectivities they depict. The article also points out their clearer commitment to ethnography, the centrality of places and displacements, and their use of folklore and local heritage. One of the most essential features of Caribbean bildungsroman is the particular crisis that many protagonists are facing when they realize that the colonial ideals of individuality are unreachable for them within the postcolonial reality.