TY - CHAP

T1 - Translocated spaces and mobile identities in Camilo Gonsar’s Cara a Times Square

AU - Miranda-Barreiro, David

PY - 2021/11/30

Y1 - 2021/11/30

N2 - Camilo Gonsar’s novel Cara a Times Square [Towards Times Square] (1980) revolves around the journey across New York City of two characters whose real names are unknown to the reader. Both are migrants, possibly from the same country (seemingly from Galicia, although the narrator does not fully confirm their origin), who converse in English. One of them, who asks to be called the Belgian, openly rejects his national identity and declares to be from nowhere. As they walk, their itinerary becomes blurred and they end up in another city which lacks any markers of identity. The novel therefore suggests an interrelation between the literary construction of space and identity conflicts. This chapter analyses this allegorical journey, which anticipates the tension between the global and local examined by academics such as Marc Augé (1995), Susantha Goonatilake (1995) and Manuel Castells (1997). Drawing on the term “translocation”, borrowed from postcolonial studies, I will suggest that the representation of space in this novel aims not only to reflect such tension, but also to create a glocal image that expresses the resistance of local identities against being engulfed by globalisation.

AB - Camilo Gonsar’s novel Cara a Times Square [Towards Times Square] (1980) revolves around the journey across New York City of two characters whose real names are unknown to the reader. Both are migrants, possibly from the same country (seemingly from Galicia, although the narrator does not fully confirm their origin), who converse in English. One of them, who asks to be called the Belgian, openly rejects his national identity and declares to be from nowhere. As they walk, their itinerary becomes blurred and they end up in another city which lacks any markers of identity. The novel therefore suggests an interrelation between the literary construction of space and identity conflicts. This chapter analyses this allegorical journey, which anticipates the tension between the global and local examined by academics such as Marc Augé (1995), Susantha Goonatilake (1995) and Manuel Castells (1997). Drawing on the term “translocation”, borrowed from postcolonial studies, I will suggest that the representation of space in this novel aims not only to reflect such tension, but also to create a glocal image that expresses the resistance of local identities against being engulfed by globalisation.

KW - Galician Literature

KW - Migration

KW - Identity

KW - Globalisation

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9783643907431

T3 - Hispanic Transnational Studies

BT - Here and Beyond

A2 - Mainer, Sergi

A2 - Miranda-Barreiro, David

A2 - Veiga, Martín

PB - Lit Verlag

ER -