Sammendrag
This paper aims to contribute to the formulation of a comparative framework for the analysis of border concepts in cultural production, using as examples two immigrant narratives. To ground interpretations of bordering in the cultural sphere one must correlate an investigation of social actants ¬– i.e. of the performative force of aesthetic works in a social context and their meaning for users and producers – to an analysis of content and form. In narrative texts, border concepts are performed through rhetorical means, i.e. the use of various figures (metaphors, synecdoches etc) for the border, along with narrative and formal structure of border-crossings, in themselves implying border figures. Close border poetics readings result in a repertoire of border figures, keys to the text’s negotiation of border concepts.
Literary postcolonial immigrant narratives in Norway can be traced back to the publication of Khalid Hussain’s novel Pakkis in 1986. The publication category expresses disparate desires for knowledge, identification, debate, and aesthetic experience. A new generation of immigrant community authors who have spent parts or the whole of their childhoods in Norway have acquired a competence in Norwegian literary culture. Later books also address transnational mobility and emphasize territorial border crossings.
My examples are written by women born in Somalia but growing up partly in Norway, the 2008 novel by Roda Ahmed, Forberedelsen, and the 2009 autobiography by war orphan Amal Aden, Min drøm om frihet. In addition to immanent analysis, extended medial receptions make possible appraisals of the social actants involved.
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