“Hamsun's Liminality” : In Wonderland as Counter-Discourse

Soha  El Samad

doi:10.7557/13.5640

Authors

Soha El Samad Lebanese University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5640

Keywords:

Counter-discourse, Travel Literature, Ambivalence, Hybridity, Mimicry

Abstract

This study seeks to establish the extent to which In Wonderland is a cultural hybridity discourse and a writing-back to Euro-American travelogues. In this ‘different’ travelogue, Hamsun’s voice cuts through the borderlands of the Russian colonized Caucasus region to reveal contempt for acquired culture and a rejection of global uniform identities in a manner that accords with Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘hybridity.’ While keeping in mind Hamsun’s undisputed parodic style, this postcolonial reading claims that mimicry, as applied by Hamsun, is a practical demonstration of Bhabha’s theory that reflects his propensity to destabilize the West’s monolithic stance as regards the Orient. It therefore reveals the manner in which his supposedly colonial discourse exposes the discriminatory nature of colonial dominance. Within this context, Hamsun has become a cultural hybrid who refuses to imitate conventional European travel narratives or follow in their differentiating paths. On the whole, the basic argument is that Hamsun’s travelogue which invariably asserts, subverts and removes boundaries, does not endorse Orientalism neither in its romantic nor in its subservient form.

Author Biography

Soha El Samad, Lebanese University

Soha El Samad is a Professor of Postcolonial Literature at the Department of English Language and Literature at the Lebanese University in Northern Lebanon. Having been immersed in both West African and Middle Eastern Cultures, her main focus is literary theory and cultural studies. She has done research in Anglophone and English Literature, and her latest publications are: “A Cultural Median: One Thousand Nights and a Night before 1700,” / “‘On Illusion and Timelessness:’ flux and absolute immanence in D.H. Lawrence’s fiction” / “Beyond the Cataclysm: Cultural Nationalism in McCarthy’s The Road and Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”

References

Ashcroft, Bill et al. 2001. Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies. London: Routledge.

Bhabha, Homi. 1991. “Art and National Identity: A Critics’ Symposium,” Interview with Brian Wallis, Art in America, 79.9, p.82.

Bhabha, Homi. 2006. “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences.” The Postcolonial Studies Reader. Ed. Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge.

——— .1984. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” October 28 (1984): 125-33. Accessed June 19, 2020. doi:10.2307/778467.

———.1994. The Location of Culture. London & New York, Routledge.

Conner, Tom. 2016. “Going off the Beaten Path: Knut Hamsun’s Forays into Travel Writing.” Nordlitt 38.

Derrida, Jacques, and John D. Caputo. 1997a. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: a Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham UP.

———.1997b. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP.

Foucault, Michel. 1978. History of Sexuality. Vol. I: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.

———. & Gordon, Colin. 1980. Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (1st American ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Lyngstad, Sverre. 1004. Introduction to In Wonderland. New York: IG Publishing.

Hamsun, Knut. 2004. In Wonderland (1903). Trans. with Introduction and Notes by Sverre Lyngstad. New York: IG Publishing.

——— . 2007. Growth of the Soil. Trans. with Introduction by Brad Leithauser. New York: Penguin Books.

Markovitz, Anderi. 2011. Politics and Resentment: Antisemitism and Counter-Cosmopolitanism in the European Union. Edited by Lars Rensmann, Julius H. Schoeps. Boston: Brill Publishing.

Oxfeldt, Elisabeth. 2010. «The Ironic Traveler: Danger and Identity in Knut Hamsun’s Oriental Travelogues.» In Oxfeldt, Elisabeth: Journeys from Scandinavia. Travelogues of Africa, Asia and South America 1840-2000. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 58-77.

——— .2005. «Parodic Orientalism: Hamsun in ’Wonderland’. In: Oxfeldt, Elisabeth: Nordic Orientalism. Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination 1800-1900, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 216-21.

Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. USA: Vintage Books.

Sheen, Sven Otto. 2009. “Hamsun in Italy: A Classical or an Ideological Novelist?” Knut Hamsun Abroad: International Reception. Ed. Peter Fjaesund, Norvik Press. pp. 91- 107.

Slemon, Stephen. 1988. “Magic and Other Realisms.” Canadian Literature No. 16: A Quaterly of Criticism and Review. Vancouver: University of British Colombia.

Storskog, Camilla. 2011. «The Play with Genre: Knut Hamsun’s ‘I Æventyrland’. Folia Scandinavica Vol.13. University of Milan. pp. 19-31.

Twain, Mark, 1984. The Innocents Abroad; Roughing It (1835-1910). New York, N.Y: Library of America: Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by the Viking Press.

Wærp, Henning Howlid. 2006. «Knut Hamsun as a Travel Writer: In Wonderland.» Scandinavian-Canadian Studies. Vol. 16 (2006) pp.56-64.

Žagar, Monika. 2009. Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance. Seattle &

London: University of Washington Press.

Zook, Darren C. 2005. "Reorienting Hamsun: Or Why Glahn Left Norway for India." Scandinavian Studies 77, no. 2, 217-40. Accessed January 15, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40920586.