Reconfiguring the Extraterritorial History, Language, and Identity in selected works by Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz by Camilo Chiappe Bejar A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UCL 1 I, Camilo Chiappe Bejar confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. ________________ 2 ABSTRACT This thesis argues for a reassessment of the concept of extraterritorial literature—a term coined by George Steiner in the late sixties to highlight the global approach of nomad authors who refused to belong to a single national tradition by means of linguistic experimentation. It does so by examining a variety of examples from the work of Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz, two authors born in separate nations within the same island (Hispaniola) who live in the United States and who write in a language strange yet adjacent to their countries of origin. Danticat and Díaz express their extraterritoriality through three different approaches: By reframing the ‘official’ historical discourse of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the 20th century perpetuated by the military regimes of the Duvaliers and Trujillo; by diversifying theories of identity creation and the migrant’s role within and outside of his or her diaspora; and by reconfiguring the elocution of a new extraterritorial language which challenges pre-established parameters through the subversion of Core languages. On a larger scale, this thesis contends that, in an increasingly fluid contemporary world, extraterritorial literature can serve as a counterpoint to the insular concerns of canonical systems of classification and standardised concepts of national literature. As such, extraterritorial literature also asks us to reconsider labels such as post- nationalism and cosmopolitanism as flights of fancy detached from the harsh realities 3 instilled by the many levels of economic and cultural inequality between nations. Whereas Goethe saw comparative literature as a practice founded upon dialogues between national literatures, extraterritorial literature transcends frontiers by embracing its own complexities and inherent incompleteness, ultimately helping to construct liminal scopes and a framework for the constant critique of literary terminology itself. 4 Impact Statement This thesis focuses on the literary work of two contemporary multilingual immigrant authors from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It attempts to show the many ways in which migrant narratives are constructed and, as such, it transcends the field of comparative literature and employs a multidisciplinary approach that includes theories from a range of specialities. The introduction serves as a review of existing and contiguous material pertaining to the concept of ‘extraterritorial literature’, and could be used as a resource for drafting a syllabus on the overlapping of migration studies and literary inquiry. The first chapter deals primarily with historiography, proposing a cross-boundary reading of the shared history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and their relationship to the United States. The second chapter focuses on the linguistic tools employed by these authors to articulate their narratives, combining close textual analysis with theories of language and translation. The third chapter uses sociology as the basis for exploring issues of identity construction and diasporic narratives. Lastly, the epilogue proposes new methods for the study of migrant literature, arguing that the existing over-reliance of canons and classifications based on nation and language are limited and inappropriate for contemporary works that transcend boundaries and taxonomies. As such, this thesis could be of interest to researchers focusing on Haitian and Dominican literature, exophonic and multilingual literature, extraterritorial language, identity creation through textual representations, migration and diasporic studies– while serving as a source of reference for anyone interested in the construction of narratives in flux, and how these can be used as a pedagogic method of multicultural instruction. 5 CONTENTS Introduction..........................................................................................................................................................................................8 Chapter I: History I. People's Instinctive Travels and The Silenced Paths of History.....................................................................................46 II. A brief history of Hispaniola.........................................................................................................................................................49 III. A Zafa for every Fukú: Redressing Trujillo in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao........................................61 IV. Cutting Through Time: The Parsley Massacre in The Farming of Bones..................................................................73 V. Towards An Extraterritorial History.........................................................................................................................................89 Chapter II: Language I. Vessels of Speech: The extraterritorial language of Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz.....................................102 II. Trascending the Extraterritorial..............................................................................................................................................107 III. Yunior as Saint Jerome: Methods of Translation in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao..........................111 IV. Decolonising Lenguaje.................................................................................................................................................................127 V. Lòt bò dlo: The Other Side of Language in Brother, I’m Dying and the work of Edwidge Danticat..............137 VI. Deterritorialising The Extraterritorial................................................................................................................................ 159 Chapter III: Identity I. Life Along the Borderline..............................................................................................................................................................168 II. From Diaspora to Where?...........................................................................................................................................................171 III. The Uses of Identity: Identity Construction in Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Caroline’s Wedding’ and Junot Diaz’s ‘How To Date A Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)‘...............................................................178 IV. The Politics of Inclusion: Rejection and Acceptance in Junot Díaz’s ‘Drown’......................................................189 V. Self Reflexivity: Awareness and Politics in Edwidge Danticat’s ‘New York Day Women’................................206 VI. The Liminal Borders of Extraterritorial Identity: Danticat’s The Dew Breaker and Díaz’s short stories........................................................................................................................................................................................................213 Epilogue.................................................................................................................................................................................................225 Bibliography......................................................................................................................................................................................239 6 ‘Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.’ Toni Morrison (Nobel Lecture, 1993) 7 IntroDuction The EDges of Narrative Borders, both real and fictional, are born out of a necessity to delineate the private from the public, and contemporary societies, with their ever more blatant disparities, show an increasing amount of imaginary rifts made real. From the psychological constructs of racism to the administrative demarcations of nation states, these invented divisions serve to create a narrative of difference, perpetuating communities, as Benedict Anderson pointed out, ‘distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined’ (2006: 48). 1 This segregated fashioning of identity disconnects the individual from what is ‘other’ and reinforces her or his allegiances with the immediacy of superficial cohesions. Lives in motion, however, seldom follow the limitations dictated by pre-conditioned narratives, and it is in the dramatic clash between reality and fiction, between expectations and certainty, between profound injustice and the wish for equality, where we find the extraterritorial. The materialisation of borders in today’s world is made evident in several societal norms we take for granted; starting, for instance, with the queues at passport 1 Anderson’s definition of nations as imagined communities can be summed up, in his own words, as follows: ‘I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation