Translocational Positionality of Returnee Migrants: The New Normal

The globalization and migration processes are typical features of our societies that affect policy, economy and the culture of each country. Migration involves many challenges: identity issues and well-being of migrants in negotiating new roles and values. At the social level, migration involves demographic, educational, sociological and employment aspects. The reasons of migration are numerous, including the economic as the major one. The authors employ a multidisciplinary approach by drawing on the geographical, sociological and anthropological disciplines in disclosing the narrative of returnees. The methodology employed in this study is based on semi structured interviews with seven returnee women. The study focuses on the transcultural and transnational positionality of the Latvian returnee migrants who are trying to settle down in Latvia, by revealing their hopes and struggles while relocating in a new cultural context. In this study, the authors place a particular focus on the narratives of female returnees. The main question is directed at how the returnees locate themselves at the conjuncture of diverse localities in building their transcultural identity.

Explanatory potential of the concepts of transculturation/transculturality in intercultural education

The text introduces the explanatory potential of the concept of transculturation in intercultural education approaches. In the context of today’s migration situation in Europe, there is a need for alternative educational strategies. In these circumstances, the concept of transculturation/transculturality might be one of the proposals that should be considered. Giving consideration to the changing globalised reality that poses new challenges to education systems around the world, I discuss two important concepts of transculturality: Fernando Ortiz’s concept of transculturation and Wolfgang Welsch’s proposal of transculturalism and transcultural identity. I supplement them with other threads related to transcultural proposals. I am referring primarily to Dirk Hoerder’s concept of Transcultural Societal Studies and the proposal set forth by Lyudmyla Gorbunova. Next, I mention two international research projects in which Polish researchers have taken part, and which, in my opinion, are of a transcultural nature. Finally, I enumerate the most important elements of the discussed concepts of transculturalism/transculturation, which demonstrate their explanatory potential in the context of intercultural education.

“No One Leaves Home Unless Home Is the Mouth of a Shark”: Dwelling and the Complexities of Return in Warsan Shire’s Poetry

Africa’s bitter historical experience of slavery and racial discrimination influences diasporic literary writers in their representation of home and its exigencies. This is due to the sordid effect of racial conflicts culminating in disillusionment of writers, who engage in the nostalgic longing for their country of origin, notwithstanding the influences of the host country on African migrants. By exploring Warsan Shire’s poetry, this study, through the lens of modernity and globalization, examines the concept of home while x-raying locations of the African immigrant in diaspora. The research utilised the Postcolonial theory and the qualitative method of analysis to examine how diasporic immigrants, particularly female subalterns struggle to grapple with the intricacies of dwelling in a hostile clime which situates the “Us” and “Them” binary opposition on their lived conditions. It analysed Shire’s poems as a product of the transcultural identity formation of the poet, illustrating her migratory experiences through the notion of “unhomely” (in her home country) and “Homeliness” (in her host country) as dilemmas that bisect her quest for return home because of war. The study, thus, submits that globalization alternates the idea of situating home as a place of origin.

Self-Translation in Transcultural Mode: Francesca Duranti on how to Put ‘a Scent of Basil’ into One’s Translations

“Who but he... had ever felt what these words expressed?–these words that thundered and howled through his mind translating himself to himself, with such appalling fitness” (Amélie Louise Rives) Francesca Duranti is a creative writer who grew up with several languages and spent much time abroad. Her mother tongue is German but she writes mainly in Italian and translates mostly from French and English. Her particular transcultural sensibility runs through her body of work but is mostly manifest in her novel Sogni mancini (1996), the story of an Italian academic woman living in New York obsessed with the idea of finding a way to get rid of fixed identities and monological perspectives. Subsequently, Duranti decided to self-translate this novel into English, publishing it with the title Left-handed Dreams (2000). What were her reasons for self- translating this book, what self-translation strategies did she adopt, what did she gain and what did she lose in the process of mediating between two cultures and how did readers receive her target text? In this in-depth interview with Arianna Dagnino, Duranti reveals to what extent her acquired transcultural identity affected not only her way of writing but also of self-translating. As a coda to the interview and in light of what emerges from the writer’s answers, Dagnino analyzes Duranti’s self-translation, looking for those elements that mostly reveal the transcultural identity of a writer who decided to translate herself to herself. The article includes introductory paragraphs on the theory of the transcultural and transcultural identities (Dagnino 2015, Epstein 2009, Welsch 2009) as well as on the most recent studies in the field of literary self-translation (Grosjean 2010, Grutman 2016, Saidero 2011).

Obcokrajowcy w kulturze flamenco: problem negocjacji tożsamości

Artykuł traktuje o cudzoziemcach pragnących zostać profesjonalnymi tancerzami flamenco w Sewilli i o związanych z tym pragnieniem wyzwaniach tożsamościowych, przed jakimi stają. Obcokrajowcy stanowią zasadniczą większość w sewilskich szkołach tańca i to dzięki nim szkoły te mogą istnieć. Decydując się na dłuższy pobyt w Sewilli, wkraczają oni w transkulturowe pole wymiany, przez co zostają wpisani w relacje władzy – podporządkowania i dominacji. Ich sytuację oraz relacje zachodzące w sewilskiej przestrzeni bardzo dobrze opisują kategorie transkulturacji/transkulturowości oraz tożsamości transkulturowej. Cudzoziemcy pragnący zaistnieć w profesjonalnym świecie flamenco w Sewilli czy szerzej w Hiszpanii konstruują swoją tożsamość, negocjując poszczególne jej elementy. W tekście omówione zostały trzy z nich: ekspresja, ruch i ciało. Są czynnikami autodefiniującymi oraz elementami decydującymi o wykluczeniu i/lub „dyskryminacji” ze strony autochtonów i zagranicznych widzów. Foreigners in Flamenco Culture: the Problem of Identity Negotiation The research problem presented in this text is the negotiation of transcultural identity as exemplified by foreigners enrolled in flamenco dance schools in Seville who are or aspire to be professional flamenco dancers and compete on the Spanish labour market in the flamenco industry. Foreigners are a definite majority at Seville’s dance schools, whose existence depends on them. By deciding to spend a prolonged period of time in Seville, they enter a field of transcultural exchange and become involved in power relations of subordination and domination. Being a subordinate group, foreigners need to negotiate their place in the flamenco community on an ongoing basis. Their situation and relations developing in Seville are well-described through the categories of transculturation/transculturality and transcultural identity. Foreigners wishing to engage in the professional world of flamenco in Seville or, more broadly, in Spain, construct their identity by negotiating its individual elements. Three of them are discussed in the text: expression, movement and body. They are self-defining factors and elements that determine the exclusion and/or “discrimination” of indigenous people and foreign viewers.

Одесская эйкумена как Топос идентичности в романе Ванды Мазур "Деньги"

The article analyses the image of the Odessa’s Ecumene in Vanda Mazur’s novel “Money” as a factor of anthropic identity. It is noted that the spatial topoi in the novel are conceptualized not so much in the aspect of the ethnic factor, but rather on the existential-ontological and mythopoetical one. The spatial topic of the novel, with all the obvious signs of non-fiction (topoi of France, North Africa, Ukraine, Odessa, etc.), is characterized by symbolic meanings and archetypal codes. It corresponds to the poetics of the ambiguity of such nominations as “south of Ukraine”, “southern city”, the people of which made it possible to create Odessa‘s Ecumene. But the reader will not immediately find out which southern city is being described. Only in the course of the narrative the image of the place is specified by the topoi of Odessa and the Odessa region. The semantical field of these concepts expands to the meanings of the mental state of the entire Ukrainian ethnic group in times of existential and civilizational upheaval. The text formation strategy – between the fiction and non-fiction format – comes into being in the novel by combining the discourses of vision, reflection and credible spatial topoi. According to this, the toponyms’ sphere in the created literary pictures of the Ecumene’s world is not limited to the function of the object sign of a real place, but is ador- ned with symbolic meanings. Obviously, the artistic anthropology of Vanda Mazur’s novel “Money” correlates with the concepts of postcolonial studies on overcoming Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism, against the background of the approval of the ideas of environmental and cultural ecumenism. The concepts of Odessa and the Odessa region within the borders of the artistic world of the novel are articulated as axiologically significant in affirming the transcultural identity of the characters.