Třetí prostor a střední Evropa v Kunderově románu Nevědění
Marek Nekula, Bohemicum – Center for Czech Studies der Universität Regensburg
Recenzovaný článek
s. 12–49 (obrazová příloha s. 184–187)
Licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.63013/la.2024.01
The Third Space and Central Europe in Kundera’s Novel Ignorance
Abstract:
This article first situates Kundera’s novel Ignorance (first published in Spanish in 2000, in English in 2002, and in French in 2003) in the context of Kundera’s multilingual work and interprets the novel through Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of Third Space. The study also interprets the novel against the backdrop of Kundera’s famous essay Un Occident kidnappé (1983) or A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe (1984) and interrogates the Orientalisation of Central Europe in the novel Ignorance. Orientalisation refers to the Western perspective on the East, focused on by Said’s theory and criticized by postcolonial theory; in Kundera’s novel, it is Irena’s and Josef’s view of their native country, inhabited by family members and acquaintances, which they have both lost by going into exile. When they return to Czechoslovakia years later, they lose the nostalgic illusion of it being a cultural, cultivated country to which they could and would like to return, an illusion preserved (or created) in exile. The study aims to show how both characters find themselves in a Third Space between two cultures – the “Western” one that did not accept them, and the “Central European” one that, nevertheless, has disappeared during its political “kidnapping” into the East. This is the starting point for the discussion of a perspectival shift regarding Central Europe in Kundera’s work.
Klíčová slova:
Milan Kundera; migrační literatura; třetí prostor; hybridita; orientalizace; střední Evropa
Keywords:
Milan Kundera; literature of migration; Third Space; hybridity; Orientalisation; Central Europe
Citace:
Nekula, Marek: Třetí prostor a střední Evropa v Kunderově románu Nevědění.
Literární archiv 56, Třetí prostor české literatury, 2024. Ed. Marek Nekula, s. 12–49; https://doi.org/10.63013/la.2024.01.