Narratives of Space in the Writing of Five Contemporary Canadian Women Writers of Italian Origin

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the English writing of five Canadian authors of Italian origin – Darlene Madott, Maria Ardizzi, Licia Canton, Rosanna Battigelli and Dorina Michelutti – in terms of how they represent personal and inner spaces as a meaningful focal point for interpreting and reflecting on the dislocated subject’s quest for identity. I will show how they use the idea of compensatory spaces as a literary strategy to portray personal, private or inner spaces to articulate their characters’ processes of accepting or resisting cultural hybridity and multiplicity. The works of fiction I consider here embody the shifting perception of inner or personal spaces in the characters’ lives, and how this defines their spatial relationships with the new country in different terms and at different stages of the migrant’s process of accepting his or her new country. My reading is based on Homi Bhabha’s notions of third space and cultural translation and Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopic spaces; I define these as compensatory spaces, an idea also rooted in Foucault’s view that heterotopies of compensation represent differences that transcend dichotomies and are open to fluidity. In this paper, the idea of third space addresses the process of cultural translation – understood not only as the positive and dialogic creation of a hybridized subject, but also as a narrative of conflicting personal spaces that gives voice to experiences of cultural dislocation.