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

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

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.

Keywords

  • Galician Literature, Migration, Identity, Globalisation
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHere and Beyond
Subtitle of host publicationNarratives of Travel and Mobility in Contemporary Iberian Culture
EditorsSergi Mainer, David Miranda-Barreiro, Martín Veiga
PublisherLit Verlag
ISBN (print) 9783643907431
Publication statusPublished - 30 Nov 2021

Publication series

NameHispanic Transnational Studies
PublisherLit Verlag
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