TY - CHAP

T1 - Mediterranean Connections: Representing the Migrant's Journey in Le voyage des âmes by Mounsi

AU - Lewis, Jonathan

PY - 2021/9

Y1 - 2021/9

N2 - The recent migrant crisis in the Mediterranean has brought into sharp focus the potentially devastating consequences of the migrant’s journey. Of course, the Mediterranean has always constituted an important site of tense interaction and connection between Europe, Africa and the Middle East and, consequently, it has been a space across which people have always travelled. This chapter looks specifically at representations of the journey between Algeria and France, with particular focus on a text by Mounsi, Le voyage des âmes (1997), in which the motif of the journey takes on a particularly prevalent role. Drawing on both established and more recent theories of travel and mobility, the chapter will argue that depictions of the journey in the text have the ultimate effect of unsettling monocultural definitions of culture and identity, all the while emphasizing the potentially devasting consequences of migration. In this way, the text provides some nuance to the glorification of mobility by scholars such as Homi Bhabha and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, highlighting instead the inhibiting effects of migration and the need to recognize the interdependence of mobility and immobility in today’s world.

AB - The recent migrant crisis in the Mediterranean has brought into sharp focus the potentially devastating consequences of the migrant’s journey. Of course, the Mediterranean has always constituted an important site of tense interaction and connection between Europe, Africa and the Middle East and, consequently, it has been a space across which people have always travelled. This chapter looks specifically at representations of the journey between Algeria and France, with particular focus on a text by Mounsi, Le voyage des âmes (1997), in which the motif of the journey takes on a particularly prevalent role. Drawing on both established and more recent theories of travel and mobility, the chapter will argue that depictions of the journey in the text have the ultimate effect of unsettling monocultural definitions of culture and identity, all the while emphasizing the potentially devasting consequences of migration. In this way, the text provides some nuance to the glorification of mobility by scholars such as Homi Bhabha and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, highlighting instead the inhibiting effects of migration and the need to recognize the interdependence of mobility and immobility in today’s world.

KW - Migration

KW - Literature

KW - Mobility

KW - Immobility

KW - Mediterranean Sea

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781032008806

SN - 9781032067902

T3 - Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature

SP - 56

EP - 72

BT - Figures of the Migrant

A2 - Brownlie, Siobhan

A2 - Abouddahab, Rédouane

PB - Routledge

CY - New York

ER -