Daljit Nagra’s Look We Have Coming to Dover! and the Limits of the Translocal

Abstract

1. Introduction: On Relationship of 'Trans-' and 'Location'A DISCUSSION OF 'THE LIMITS OF THE TRANSLOCAL' lilUSt base its argument on a precise definition of conceptual implications of terms 'local' and 'translocar, particularly since 'limits' title of this article affect term 'translocal' rather than its referent (if such a referent exists). To begin with prefix 'trans-': In his introduction to Postcolonial Literatures English, Tobias Doring stresses that in field of postcolonial studies the prefix which modifies so many different terms 'transnational' and 'transculturaP, refers to a kind of dynamics.1 Terms with prefix 'trans-', Doring goes on to explain,differ from previously established terms 'international' and 'intercultural': they do not focus on links between two given entities - nations, cultures - assuming that these entities essentially remain same; they rather presuppose border transgressions and constitutive transformations to take place all along and they explore productive instabilities, fluidities and conflicts within such entities - nations, cultures - which render all political attempts to draw a rigid boundary around them questionable.2My reading of poetry Daljit Nagra's acclaimed debut collection Look We Have Coming to Dover! (2007) will point to dangers inherent prevalent practice of simply conflating this idea of a foreignizing dynamics with spatial concept of 'local' use of term 'translocal.' Such a conflation of concepts can be found, for example, an article Jahan Ramazani3 which draws on Stuart Hall's notion of 'diaspora identities'. Quoting from Hall's influential article Cultural Identity and Diaspora,4 he states that poems of black British poets are defined by recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; hybridity.5 What I find problematical about Ramazani' s approach is not, of course, that he draws on Hall's concept of an internally differentiated and dynamic identity as such, but that he - like quite a number of other critics - equates this idea with spatial aspect of 'translocar. A passage where this equation of hybrid with spatial is particularly obvious reads:[Black British writers'] poems are 'translocar, that they see metropolis afresh [...] and shuttle across and unsettle imperial hierarchies of centre and periphery, motherland and colonial offspring, North and South. In short, they dislocate local into translocation.6In Ramazani's definition of term, 'translocation' becomes a rather abstract quality. His use of 'translocation' activates only first sense of 'location' as defined O ED : the action of placing; or condition of being placed.7 By focusing on important dynamic and procedural aspect of '(trans)location', Ramazani loses sight of second, no less important, meaning of 'location': the or condition ?? occupying a particular place; local position, situation.8 This is meaning also covered term 'locality', which unambiguously refers to static fact or quality of having a place, that is, of having space.9In other words, when ideas of 'hybrid' and 'spatial' are conflated 'trans-location' more concrete aspect of term 'location' all too often seems to get completely lost, and with it specific conceptual power which term 'translocation' - unlike, for example, 'translation', 'transgression' or 'transition' - can unfold, if one takes seriously its capacity to point at attempts to 'ground' and stabilize a position space dynamic encapsulated prefix 'trans-'. To put it differently again, what is lost Ramazani's and other critics' exclusive concentration on procedural dynamic of 'translocation' is social space. …