Longing and Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance
10.13125/2039-6597/2907
Introduction to the current issue "Longing and Belonging/Désir et Appartenance".
application/pdf
2039-6597
2907
13
en
Brigitte Le Juez
Between
Longing and Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
7
Introduction
2017-06-02
2017-06-01
2017-06-02
2017-06-02
1
Brigitte Le Juez
2017/06/02
10.13125/2039-6597/2907
2039-6597
13
Longing and Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/2907/3650
7
                Longing and Belonging
                Désir et Appartenance

                               Brigitte Le Juez


      Studies on belonging tend to focus on sociological phenomena,
essentially on definitions of identity, according to social, ethnic,
religious, political or gender groupings. Literature allows us to
examine these stances from individual and complex points of view.
Indeed, the fact that some individuals may be between groups (in
colonial circumstances, for example, when original groups have been
fractured), or not allowed to integrate a new group (when the original
group is revealed to be one of exclusion), shows that there are no hard
and fast ways to reach a full understanding of what it is to belong – or
even if belonging is at all possible, which then brings the issue of
longing into the equation. How do fictional characters reflect these
multifaceted notions? This intricate question is answered in this special
issue which gathers a selection of articles around the themes of
“Longing and Belonging/Désir et Appartenance”.
      One common denominator is the spatial factor. Places of longing
and places of belonging often appear in parallel or in contrast. Foreign
people, cities and lands, as reported by travellers for instance, can be
stereotyped – the other group’s practices compared unfavourably with
the narrators’ perception of their own group’s traditions. The conceit
toward others developed through proud belonging to a homeland, as
history has shown, leads to issues of nationalism, blind allegiances in
general, and violent power struggles. Instilling fear and sometimes
loathing, such struggles create a situation of forced belonging, and
impose in the worst cases, subjugation and forms of slavery. This
question is examined in our first section: Identarian Images.



Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/ May 2017)
Brigitte Le Juez, Longing Belonging/Désir et Appartenence



      In “The Kalaripayattu and the Capoeira as Masculine
Performances: From Bodies of Resistance to Neoliberal Tourism
Bodies”, Sanghita Sen and Indrani Mukherjee look at the emergence of
two personified martial arts, one from India and the other from Brazil,
as means to resist the devastating effects of colonization and
regaining/retaining one’s identity. The bodies of African slaves and
Kalaripayattu martial artists were once turned into spaces over which
colonial rulers inscribed their imposed domination and control. These
men, however, fought back against this fait accompli through
concealed martial moves, imperceptible to their tormentors, offering an
alternative narrative of protest and identity. Rapidly banned by their
colonial masters, they clandestinely passed on their art, but they have
recently been reinstated by their now autonomous countries. If at first,
they regained a dignified position within their respective nations’
cultural expression, today they risk being appropriated by far-right
politics and even the tourism industry. The fight therefore must
continue.
      “Imagological Figures: Disenchantment, Allophilia, and
Belonging in E. Vila-Matas and A. Tabucchi”, by Maria João Simões,
also focuses on the complexity of representations of the other through
two contemporary novelists, Enrique Vila-Matas and Antonio
Tabucchi, who address perceptions of foreigners and how literature
illustrates the shift that can take place in individual definitions of
identity and belonging when, through travel, contact between cultures
happens. The characters’ relation with their living space can then prove
problematic, as they realise that belonging to a specific locus can clash
with one’s longing for another, affecting the way they perceive their
identity and its relation to alterity.
      With “Two Smokers in Search of Identity: Comparing the
Representations of Tobacco Use in Alastalon salissa and The Magic
Mountain”, Mika Hallila proposes an original take on identarian
aspects through a comparative analysis of the representations of
tobacco use in two modernist novels, Volter Kilpi’s Alastalon salissa and
Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Deciphering the various cultural
meanings of pipe- and cigar-smoking in fiction, Hallila demonstrates


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how they influence the perception and construction of characters’
identities, and how they hold opposite, yet complementary, roles in the
representation of (be)longing and in the success, or failure, of the
establishment of an identity. Tobacco use, here, connects the notion of
becoming with that of belonging.
       In Catherine Bartlett’s essay, the Other is the Jewish character.
“Belongings and Longings of the Beautiful Jewess and the Jewish
Villain in Nineteenth-Century German, English and French Novels”
approaches the concept of belonging by questioning the stereotypical
filial pair as found in literary texts. Reflecting an ambiguous posture on
the part of authors towards Jewishness, the daughter is systematically
presented as attractive. On one hand, she is related to the Bible and
perceived as easily convertible; on the other, she is related to the
Orientalist fantasy. Her father, on the contrary, is repulsive, resisting
conversion, and he is related to ghettos as unwholesome places.
Daughter and father differ in the paths they choose in their attempt to
belong to their society and communities therein, which may remain an
unfulfilled (and costly) longing.
       At an ordinary level, through time, discriminations have been
applied against individuals and groups not corresponding or yielding
to dominant norms. Prejudiced approaches toward people of different
origins or identities have, in many cases, ensured that groups should
be utterly denied any possibility to integrate. However, historical and
political factors also have their share of responsibility in this state of
affairs.
       Mapping out and interrogating representations of geographical
and national belonging, the second section, Longing to Belong: The
Community, investigates how the individual sense of belonging asserts
itself while being constantly challenged by the changes that take place
over time at political and economic levels. This inexorable
reinterpretation of selfhood, demanding individual conformity to new
norms, blurs identarian boundaries, thus provoking a continuously
frustrated longing.
       With “Les Juifs de la Mitteleuropa : le « ciment » perdu”, Igor
Fiatti considers what happens to the Jewish community after the


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Brigitte Le Juez, Longing Belonging/Désir et Appartenence



failure of successive attempts at assimilation. Fiatti explores the
perspective of writers such as Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler or Franz
Kafka, and examines the destiny of Central European Jewish
intellectual elite through an analysis of its literary development, the
mythogenesis of the House of Habsburg, and the dismay that followed
World War II in Austria. While Central European Jews never formed a
homogenous group, an identity crisis (which included the temptation
to hide one’s origins and one’s talents) affected them all, as the
“cement” or bond between them had been dissolved by the disastrous
and erratic trajectory of Western civilisation. Here, the anguish of non-
belonging finally leads to essential and constructive philosophical
questions.
      Yves Clavaron’s “La Palestine d’Edward Said : La dernière
frontière ou l’impossible appartenance” comments on Out of Place
(1999), the Said’s memoirs that present Palestine as both personally
and politically lost. However, even if the title evokes the impossibility
to ever return, the main objective of the book is to enact a
reconstruction of the self as well as a historical restoration through an
evocation of the lost homeland. Said, torn between the dual sense of
belonging characteristic of exiles, positions himself as a human border
for Palestine, the country that he never knew as a nation within
internationally recognised frontiers, and that for him will always
symbolise the impossibility to belong.
      “Longing and Belonging in a 19th-century Academic Family: The
Example of Clarissa and Leopold von Ranke”, by Andreas D. Boldt,
demonstrates how a different historical context also requiring
adaptation to political and geographical changes, can still allow
individual affirmation of cultural tolerance and identarian uniqueness.
German historian Leopold von Ranke, whose sense of belonging was
deeply rooted in his native Prussia, and his wife Clarissa, who was
originally from Ireland, together combined aspects of varied European
cultures while living in Berlin. The cosmopolitan atmosphere of the
‘Salon Ranke’ run by Clarissa and the writing of European national
histories by Leopold allowed the couple to share a firmly anchored, yet
flexible identity.


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      Peggy Karpouzou, in “Beyond East and West: Rethinking
National Identity through Diffracted Gazes in Greek Travelogues at the
end of the 20th Century”, investigates the notion of Greekness as
revealed in contemporary Greek travelogues about China and the
USA. Using an imagological approach, Karpouzou reveals national
typologies found in Greek travellers’ rendering of cultures not their
own. Perceiving what is mostly familiar to them, what they note and
comment upon is consequently partial and standardised. Greekness is
also explored here beyond the usual perception of tensions between
East and West found in Greek history. Instead, a new conception of
Greek identity as “state of mind” is found in the studied travelogues,
through notions of diaspora, nostalgia, connectivity and resistance
against oppressive forms of globalization.
      As we have seen, authors and their characters can follow or resist
systems related to spatially- or culturally-defined groups, bringing
political considerations to the fore. Consequential changes can trigger
stylistic novelty, enabling artists to articulate intricate definitions of
longing and attempt to voice the specification of a space where one
might belong. This is the crutch of our third section, Belonging in
Expression and Representation.
      The deeply ontological sense of belonging that oral literature
provides is Blaž Zabel’s central point in “Belonging in Ancient Greek
Oral Tradition”. Zabel argues that oral literature, due to the very
nature of language, asserts the solidity of belonging to a specific place,
community or culture. Based on an analysis of Homeric Hymn 9, “To
Artemis”, Zabel demonstrates that orality also inhabits written
literature and that whether oral or written, literary works circulate
beyond their original loci to engage with worlds beyond their own
time and space, whilst retaining their specificity. Thus, if literature is
indeed universal, its original oral quality nevertheless expresses first
and foremost a belonging to a specific culture, era and locus.
      Manus O’Dwyer brings this argument further through his
examination of modern verse. In “Poetry and Community in the work
of José Ángel Valente”, O’Dwyer analyses the Spanish poet’s
exploration of the relation between poetic language and community.


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Brigitte Le Juez, Longing Belonging/Désir et Appartenence



He argues that the crux of the tension central to Valente’s work is to be
found between his desire to create a language that would be the basis
for community-building, and his desire to stay true to his ethical
commitment to alterity. Valente refuses exclusion and champions
integration, thus opening the possibility to consider new ways of being
with others.
      As a contemporary poet who has lived through terrible events,
Valente often uses images of disconnected figures surrounded by
silence and emptiness. Such images bring us to Catherine Grall’s “Être
là ou ne pas être là – esquisse de typologie du spectral dans quelques
œuvres littéraires occidentales contemporaines”, in which she
discusses how the artistic representation of a traumatic loss, however
unsatisfactory it may seem to its author, still enables readers to witness
the remembrance endeavour operated through self-exploration,
starting with and against death. Grall maintains that numerous works
of fiction today present characters that struggle to inhabit the world,
and she studies the techniques their authors adopt to defy the
irrepresentable. Different types of spectral forms thus strive to belong
to the present in these novels. Yet, the past haunts these contemporary
narratives, and other obstacles, such as cultural incompatibility,
complicate further the characters’ life and ability to belong in their
locus and time.
      The preservation of the otherness of an entity and the central role
of time are also to be found in our final essay, “Literary Realism as
Archive Art”, in which Aleš Vaupotič approaches the issue of literary
realism through the prism of artworks that are offered as archives.
Archival artwork involves the construction of an exhaustive entirety,
fruitfully linking the principle of archiving with the act of production.
Vaupotič examines possible links between the archival approaches to
art production in the 20th and 21st centuries and the practices of realist
writing from the 19th century. Using Dickens’, Joyce’s and Borges’
works as examples, Vaupotič argues that the discursive nature of all
reality can be reflected upon through the artistic use of the archive and
that an approach focussing on archive art provides a revised image of



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the literary history of recent centuries, in which art no longer belongs
in the ivory towers of yesteryear.
      Identities are formed and disputed within a large variety of
frameworks. Divisions between them, whether it be from a cultural,
political or gendered point of view, all relate to a sense of longing to
belong – a sense challenged by oppositions, such as those between
powerful centres and peripheries. Authors and artists have
consistently disturbed claims of superiority when grounded in
political, cultural, ethnic or geographical specificity. Identities must be
allowed to evolve over time and space, as every human contact brings
new ways of looking at oneself in/and the world.
      The articles in this special issue, which examine a wide array of
topics around the themes of “Longing and Belonging/Désir et
Appartenance”, constitute a substantial contribution to the furthering
of our understanding of diverse aspects of human identity. Against all
forms of intolerance, and in a current context of increased migration as
well as shifting political and social environments, these works opt to
show that there have always been obstacles to self- and community-
identity choices. Yet, as literature demonstrates, human endeavour to
define itself has never ceased, nor has it given up on refining itself.
While different types of representation have deliberately distorted the
identities of particular groups, and diverse forms of conflict have upset
the delicate balance of multiethnic cultures, as evident here, there have
always been over time changes as well as improvements in perceptions
and articulations of the (un)acceptable. Comparative literature is the
guardian of an ethical expression encompassing all viewpoints,
questioning close-minded postures, and epitomizing the human
endeavour to exist in a fair world.




                              The author
Brigitte Le Juez



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Brigitte Le Juez, Longing Belonging/Désir et Appartenence



      Brigitte Le Juez is Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at Dublin
City University, Ireland. She is also the General Coordinator of the
European Network for Comparative Literary Studies/Réseau Européen
d'Etudes Littéraires Comparées. Her publications include “Curiosity
killed… the woman: modern rewritings of Bluebeard in literary
representations of marital abuse”, Transcultural Negotiations of Gender.
Studies in (Be)longing, Eds. Saugata Bhaduri - Indrani Mukherjee
(Springer 2016); Shipwreck and Island Motifs in Literature and the Arts
(Brill | Rodopi, 2015), and “Positive uncertainty and the ethos of
comparative literature”, CLCWeb. Special issue on “Comparative
Literature in Europe: State of the Art” (2013). She was also Guest Editor
of the thematic issue on “Transition(s)” for the Revue de Littérature
Comparée, 2013.

      Email: brigitte.lejuez@dcu.ie



                                       The paper
Date sent: 31/01/2017
Date accepted: 15/04/2017
Date published: 31/05/2017



                           How to quote this paper
Le Juez, Brigitte, “Longing and Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance”,
Longing and Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance, Eds. Massimo Fusillo,
Brigitte Le Juez, Beatrice Seligardi, Between, VII.13 (2017),
http://www.betweenjournal.it/




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