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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 744

Part of Session 192: Margins vs Megapoles (Other abstracts in this session)

Writing from the periphery: A sociolinguistic critique of Alex Hijmans' Favela

Authors: McMonagle, Sarah
Submitted by: McMonagle, Sarah (University of Hamburg, Germany)

Alex Hijmans’ Favela, a memoir-cum-travelogue about how this Dutchman moved to Brazil to live with his husband, is written from the margins. Firstly,  Favela is composed in the Irish language; a lesser-used language, it is fair to say, that is on the margins of written literature. Secondly, Hijmans chronicles his move to a poor township on the outskirts of Salvador, Brazil’s third largest city. The favela of Tancredo Neves is so isolated that it is not included on any official map. As this white European depicts settling down there with his husband’s family who are descended from African slaves, all described events point towards centre-periphery models (Wallerstein 2004; Blommaert 2010). Hijmans reflects on matters of race, language, wealth, sexuality and faith along the centre-periphery axis. Yet, who is precisely at the centre and who is precisely on the periphery, invariably changes according to social context and geographical location. This paper will draw on the theories of Lefebvre in considering the ideological and metaphysical meanings of space and who is thought to occupy them at a given time (Lefebvre 1991).

The various kinds of spatial semioticizations in Favela depict characters and events that are profoundly influenced by processes of globalization. Through the medium of Irish, Hijmans describes this 'small place' that is by no means isolated, but is deeply connected to global processes. Moreover, he achieves such globalized meaning production through a supposedly marginal medium. The ensuing theoretical implications for a sociolinguistics of globalization will be discussed in this paper. Accordingly, the following questions will be addressed: While out-migration from poor townships is a familiar narrative, what implications, if any, can the lesser-known arrival of relatively wealthy migrants have for the margins’ cultural landscape? For a favela that does not appear on any official map, how significant is its place in written literature? Does it matter that the characters depicted here may have neither the market nor linguistic resources to ever read about themselves?  At the same time, how does the publication of Favela challenge traditional views of Irish-language literature as being necessarily tied to Ireland or to certain topics? Overall, Favela presents us with a complex, diverse, deterritorialized and translocal example of contemporary cultural processes where multipile cultures co-exist and and may be re-produced across so-called ‘mental’ and ‘real’ spaces.

References:

Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization.New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham NC: Duke University Press.