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And the Mountains Echoed Anna Mäkinen MEMORY AND EXILE Spatiotemporal Narrations of Displacement in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences Master’s Thesis October 2020 TIIVISTELMÄ Anna Mäkinen: “Memory and Exile: Spatiotemporal Narrations of Displacement in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed” Pro gradu -tutkielma Tampereen yliopisto Englannin kielen, kirjallisuuden ja kääntämisen tutkinto-ohjelma Lokakuu 2020 Tutkielma käsittelee muistin merkitystä maanpaossa menneisyyden narratiivisen (re)konstruoinnin kannalta Khaled Hosseinin romaaneissa Leijapoika ja Ja vuoret kaikuivat. Hosseinin teoksia on tutkittu suhteellisen vähän, vaikka niissä kuvattu maanpakolaisuus on ajankohtainen aihe postmodernissa yhteiskunnassa ja lisääntyvän liikkuvuuden, globalisaation sekä niitä seuranneen ajan ja tilan pirstaloitumisen aikakaudella. Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan postmodernissa viitekehyksessä, miten maanpakoa kuvataan ja rakennetaan romaaneissa, ja miten maanpaon sekä maanpakolaisen muistin kautta voidaan ymmärtää aikaa, tilaa ja identiteettiä nykymaailmassa. Hosseinin romaanit edustavat postmodernia kirjallisuutta ja maahanmuuttajagenreä, ja kummankin keskeinen teema on maastapako Afganistanin historiallisessa kontekstissa. Leijapoika rakentuu Yhdysvaltoihin asettuneen afganistanilaisen pakolaisen muistoista, kun taas Ja vuoret kaikuivat koostuu useista toisiinsa kytkeytyvistä maanpakotarinoista, jotka kehittävät ja laajentavat maanpaon käsitettä. Maanpako näyttäytyy romaaneissa ajallis-tilallisena kokemuksena, jossa korostuvat jälkeisyys, liminaalisuus ja muuttuvuus. Aikaan ja tilaan liittyvänä ilmiönä maanpako nivoutuu muistiin, jonka kautta maanpaon kokemuksia kohdataan, tulkitaan, rakennetaan, kerrotaan ja tehdään nykyhetkessä läsnä oleviksi. Maanpakolaisen muisti on narratiivinen ja rekonstruoiva prosessi, jossa menneet ja nykyiset ajat ja tilat limittyvät toisiinsa. Ajallis-tilallisuus, liminaalisuus ja muuttuvuus leimaavat myös romaaneissa rakentuvia maanpakolaisidentiteettejä. Maanpakolaisen muistin ajallis-tilallisuus ja narratiivisuus ilmenevät Leijapojassa muistin kartoittamisen kautta. Romaania lähestytään tutkielmassa kartografisena muistelmateoksena, jossa korostuu moniaistinen muistaminen. Kartoittaessaan muistojaan maanpaosta kertoja laatii samalla kartan maanpakolaisidentiteetistään. Ja vuoret kaikuivat -romaanissa puolestaan on useita eri kertojia, mikä heijastelee postmodernia monikeskuksisuutta. Menneisyys, muisti ja identiteetti rakentuvat intertekstuaalisesti ja intermediaalisesti romaanin monissa narratiiveissa, mikä tuo esiin kaikkien (itse)representaatioiden rekonstruoidun luonteen. Moninaisten näkökulmiensa kautta romaani rakentaa globaalin, liminaalisen ja muuttuvan maanpaon tilan. Romaaneissa kerrotut maanpakomuistot ovat luonteeltaan intiimejä ja moniaistisia, mikä johtaa menneisyyden tilalliseen läsnäoloon nykyisyydessä. Elvyttämällä menneisyyden jokapäiväisen kokemusmaailman muisti muodostaa maanpaossa ajallisuuden, joka kyseenalaistaa sekä näkökulman historiaan aikakausien ja käännekohtien sarjana että postmodernin pirstaloituneen aikakäsityksen. Menneisyyden ja nykyisyyden jatkuva limittyminen horjuttaa lineaarista aikakäsitystä ja puoltaa kehämäistä aikaa, johon sisältyy myös tulevaisuus. Samalla maanpako haastaa muuttumattomia ja rajattuja tiloja ja identiteettejä painottaen niiden sijaan muuttuvuutta, moninaisuutta ja liminaalisuutta. Lopulta romaanit kirjoittavat maanpaon muutoksen ja tulemisen tilaksi, jossa ’siellä ja silloin’ ja ’täällä ja nyt’ ovat olemassa yhtä aikaa. Avainsanat: maanpako, muisti, ajallis-tilallisuus, moniaistinen kokemus, narratiivinen kartografia, postmoderni monikeskuksisuus, kehämäinen aika, liminaalisuus, jälkeisyys, muuttuvuus, narratiivinen rekonstruktio Tämän julkaisun alkuperäisyys on tarkastettu Turnitin Original Check -ohjelmalla. ABSTRACT Anna Mäkinen: “Memory and Exile: Spatiotemporal Narrations of Displacement in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed” Master’s Thesis Tampere University Degree Programme in English Language, Literature and Translation October 2020 This thesis explores the significance of memory in exile from the perspective of the narrative (re- )construction of the past in Khaled Hosseini’s novels The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed. While Hosseini’s novels have hitherto received relatively little academic attention, the exilic displacements depicted in them prove of interest in the postmodern era of accelerating mobilities, globalisation, and the consequent fragmentation of time and space. In this context, it is inspected how exile is portrayed and constructed in the novels and what implications exile and exilic memory have on understanding time, space, and identity in the contemporary world. In the realm of postmodern literature and the immigrant genre, Hosseini’s novels each thematise exile in the historical context of Afghanistan. The Kite Runner recounts the memories of an Afghan refugee to the US, while And the Mountains Echoed relates a range of interconnected exile narratives that develop and diversify the notion of exile. In the novels, exile manifests itself as a spatiotemporal experience characterised by the sense of afterness, liminality, and unfixity. Due to its affiliations with time and space, exile is intertwined with memory, through which the experiences of exile are confronted, interpreted, reconstructed, narrated, and presenced in the novels. Exilic memory is a narrative and reconstructive process defined by the constant overlapping of the past and the present times and spaces and is, thus, spatiotemporal like exile. Spatiotemporality, liminality, and unfixity characterise also the exilic identities negotiated and narrated in the novels. The spatiotemporality and narrativity of exilic memory materialise in The Kite Runner through the notion of memory mapping. The novel is read as a cartographic memoir characterised by multisensory remembrance. Through mapping his memories of exile, the narrator simultaneously maps his exilic identity. And the Mountains Echoed, in turn, reflects postmodern polycentrism through its multiple narrators. The plural perspectives of the novel exhibit intertextual and intermedial constructions of the past, memory, and identity, which evokes the reconstructed nature of all (self-)representation. Through their dispersed viewpoints, the narratives of the novel construct a global, liminal, and unfixed exile space. The exilic memories narrated in the novels are intimate and multisensory in quality, which has the effect of spatial presencing of the past in the present. In restoring the lived experience of the everyday of the past, exilic remembrance composes a temporality that interrogates both the epochal understanding of history and the fragmentation of postmodernity. The constant overlapping of the past and the present undermines linear conceptions of time, favouring, instead, a circular temporality that also contains the future. At the same time, exile queries fixed and bordered spaces and identities, opting for fluidity, plurality, and liminality. Ultimately, the novels write exile as a space of becoming where ‘there and then’ and ‘here and now’ coexist. Keywords: exile, memory, spatiotemporality, multisensory experience, narrative cartography, postmodern polycentrism, circular time, liminality, afterness, unfixity, narrative reconstruction The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Memory in Exile .................................................................................................... 1 Exile: A Spatiotemporal and Liminal Experience ........................................................................... 4 Exilic Memory and Identity: Individual and Collective Narratives of Liminality .......................... 8 Spatiotemporal Exilic Memory: Presencing the Past and the Spatial Time of the Everyday ........ 14 2. The Kite Runner: A Cartographic Memoir of Exile .................................................................. 23 Narrative Cartography: Mapping the Sensuous Everyday ............................................................ 26 Langscapes of the Mind ................................................................................................................ 33 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 46 3. And the Mountains Echoed: Narrating Postmodern Exile Space(s) .......................................... 48 Fictions of Memory: Narrative Reconstructions of the Past ......................................................... 52 Spaces in Flux: A Geocritical Reading of Exile ............................................................................ 67 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 84 4. Conclusion: Exilic Alternative(s) for Reading Contemporaneity ............................................. 87 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................................... 90 1 1. Introduction: Memory in Exile The world today is one of movement and flows, characterised by the unfixedness of postmodernity. The rapid advancement of information technology and scientific progress have
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