"Nor was there any role for you": Unsettling canonical frames in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By The Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017).
In this paper, I consider By the Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017) as examples of how the Zanzibari-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah's fiction unsettles the disempowering frames that his refugee and marginalised migrant characters encounter as they attempt to find new homes. To understand how...
| Published in: | English in Africa Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 29 - 47 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Institute for the Study of English in Africa
Nov2021
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=155387829&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 155387829 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 03768902 EIA jtl: English in Africa issn: 03768902 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2021 vid: 48 iid: 3 pid: 1771 pub: Institute for the Study of English in Africa artinfo: ui: 155387829 10.4314/eia.v48i3.2 ppf: 29 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2.8MB tig: atl: "Nor was there any role for you": Unsettling canonical frames in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By The Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017). aug: au: Bosman, Sean James su: By the Sea (Book) Gravel Heart (Book) Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948- Refugees Immigrants sug: subj: By the Sea (Book) Gravel Heart (Book) Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948- Refugees Immigrants keyword: Canonicity emblematic victims ethical agency intertextuality migrants narrative recalibration refugees rejection of victimhood ab: In this paper, I consider By the Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017) as examples of how the Zanzibari-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah's fiction unsettles the disempowering frames that his refugee and marginalised migrant characters encounter as they attempt to find new homes. To understand how Gurnah engages productively with his intertexts, this paper draws on work by Judith Butler to characterise Western canonical literature as frames, as well as Ankhi Mukherjee's description of canonicity. What becomes apparent in my examination of the selected works is a trajectory in Gurnah's authorial project from the simple rejection of frames towards new representations of refugees and marginalised migrants as fully ethical agents rather than emblematic victims. Thus, Gurnah's work could be read as an exemplar of the narrative recalibration of the representation of migrants called for by scholars such as Loren B. Landau and Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of English in Africa is the property of Institute for Study English in Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: English in Africa holder: Institute for Study English in Africa dt: @attributes: year: 2021 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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