Abstract
Sophia A. McClennen's paper, "Exilic Perspectives on 'Alien Nations'," is an excerpt from her book, The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language and Space in Hispanic Literatures (Purdue UP , 2004). In the paper, McClennen summarizes her theory that exile writing is inherently dialectical. Focusing on writers working in the latter part of the twentieth century who were exiled during a historical moment of increasing globalization, transnational economics, and the theoretical shifts of postmodernism, McClennen proposes that exile literature is best understood as a series of dialectic tensions about cultural identity. Through a comparative analysis of Juan Goytisolo (Spain), Ariel Dorfman (Chile) and Cristina Peri Rossi (Uruguay), McClennen addresses dilemmas central to debates over cultural identity such as nationalism versus globalization, time as historical or cyclical, language as representationally accurate or disconnected from reality, and social space as utopic or dystopic. After presenting an overview of her book, McClennen then focuses on the ways exile writers construct what she calls an "Alien Nation" where competing and contrasting visions of the relationship between the exile and the nation intersect and contradict.
Recommended Citation
McClennen, Sophia A.
"Exilic Perspectives on "Alien Nations"."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
7.1
(2005):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1257>
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