Publication details
Transcultural Approach to (Self)identification: Quantum Physics as a Strategy Challenging West Indian Placelessness and Historylessness
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Historical and political development of the West Indies and its representation by European explorers and scholars has led to creation of a feeling of an absence of historical roots and strong affiliation to the space. Wilson Harris explores potentials of Guyanese landscape and what we might call a “landscape of memory” to revive the forgotten roots of various ethnic groups that came to form the current hybrid societies of West Indian nations. In his fiction, Harris transgresses boundaries of ethnic (self)identification creating a highly inclusive image of a universal community that is no longer defined by its violent past and an idea of erasure, rather than creation. Through basic principles of quantum physics, Harris builds bridges across historical periods as well as cultural traditions giving birth to a mutually permeable time-space. His novels are not constricted by traditional narrative structures of realism or Cartesian logic. This opens new possibilities for interpretation and allows transformation of traditional ways of perception built on the Enlightenment philosophies of the nineteenth century, that are often at the centre of culturally transmitted stereotypes leading to marginalization of groups based on an artificial evaluation of non-qualitative characteristics. |