Supervisors info:
Anna Despotopoulou, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Summary:
Abstract
This dissertation explores two twenty-first-century novels which deal with the effects
of population exchange and diaspora on ethnic identity, and in particular Greekness.
Louis de Bernières’s Birds Without Wings (2004) and Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex
(2002) represent the ways in which ethnic identities are formed, reformed, and
transformed beyond the binaries created by borders and cultural politics. The wars,
population exchange, diaspora, and the American Melting Pot theory are among the
external influences for the hybrid identities that result from migration and exile, while
love, intermarriage, incestuous relationship, and sexual orientation are among the
internal influences. Although the novels differ regarding the reasons for migration,
voluntary or involuntary, the characters in each novel exemplify varieties of hybridized
identities. In analysing the complexity of ethnic identity and culture, this study aims to
show how cultures interact through people and how each individual has the potential to
create new forms of identity by affirming, blending, or resisting the expectations
imposed on him/her. Through cultural interaction the characters expose the ambiguities
and contradictions of the dominant culture. This intervention or, in Homi Bhabha’s
terms, cultural translation occurs in the fringes of the dominant culture and opens a third
space. It is a space where neither the dominant nor the minority culture may have a
claim to coherence. The dissertation focuses on the ways in which the motifs of
journeying and home, as well as physical spaces develop the themes of hybridity,
belonging, and cultural incoherence. It also examines the postmodern narrative
techniques used by the authors in order to exemplify the themes of identity construction
and transformation. The characters’ persistent search for a home but also their constant
negotiation of Greekness in the midst of Ottoman, European, and American discourses
lead to self-division but also survival. Eventually their constant mobility helps them
withstand the Western cultural politics that impose conformity or compromise, and the
characters are shown to survive by existing everywhere at once as a body with many
parts.
Keywords:
Keywords: Identity, hybridity, ethnic identity, third space, contact zone, population exchange, home, alienation, diaspora, diaspora compromise, melting pot theory, defamiliarization.
