Review article
Space and the construction of identity in Régine Robin’s novel The Wanderer (La Québécoite)
Diana Popović
; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad
Abstract
Published in Québec in 1983, Régine Robin’s novel The Wanderer (La Québécoite) quickly achieved immense success and was republished ten years later. This novel with an intriguing title was often considered as „ethnic“, given the fact that it was written in French by a writer who had a different mother tongue and was not originally from Québec. As an immigrant, Régine Robin dealt with the subject that was close to her: cultural shock and difficulties a newcomer faced in adapting to a new country. This is why this novel became an emblematic cipher of „migrant writing“. It represents an exceptionally fascinating work, not only from the point of view of its rich content, but also of its fragmentary structure and innovative literary process. The story is not linear and, in the words of the author herself, was „an experiment both in the literary and social sense“, which would be difficult to grasp and define. It is a work where, apparently, the author does not respect any order, either chronological, spatial or logical. Indeed, it is a text-patchwork created with pieces arranged pell-mell, where we can find accumulated fragments of the present and the past; flashbacks of history (personal); History (collective); real spaces (ancient and contemporary); imaginary spaces; a whole diversity of cultures, traditions, languages and literatures; a plurality of narrative voices; probable stories; uncertain destinies and so on. Nevertheless, the reader should not disregard the fact that there is a thread that holds together all these so-called disordered fragments, which finally build a certain image (material and cultural) of the spaces evoked and give an idea of endless wandering, since the story of each chapter ends at the same place, only to start the story again in a different way. All these probable stories and this (outer) movement in space symbolize a perpetual search and reflect the internal instability of an immigrant. Indeed, in the course of the heroine's constant displacement (both spatial and temporal wanderings) she „picks up“ one by one the pieces of her identity puzzle. The problematization of identity here presents itself as a very complex project where the notion of space (place and also non-place) announces other recurring themes from which it cannot be dissociated, such as personal origins (of heroes, of the writer), the languages she speaks and the luggage of memory. All of this contributes to a dynamic vision of the space from which emerges the question of the role it assumes in the construction of identity.
Keywords
space; identity; migrant writing; French-Canadian novel; Régine Robin; La Québécoite
Hrčak ID:
228954
URI
Publication date:
26.11.2019.
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