Narrative re/defining of the cultural identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the literature of the Bosnia and Herzegovina diaspora

Abstract

Starting from the hypothesis that spatial-cultural displacement necessarily conditions the deconstruction of cultural identity, the work, based on the theoretical assumptions of imagology and intercultural hermeneutics, considers (inter)cultural aspects of the narrative de/construction of the cultural identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the literature of the Bosnian diaspora. Finding examples in the novels "The Book of My Lives" and "My Parents: An Introduction" by Aleksandar Hemon, the novel "Nowhere, out of nowhere" by Bekim Sejranović and the collection of stories "Well, to start over" by Cecilija Toskić, the work tries to point out the spatial-cultural displacement and intercultural processes not only as factors of crosscultural adaptation, acculturation and assimilation, but also as factors that enable objective perception and narrative representation of Bosnian cultural identity. The paper concludes that the experience of spatialcultural displacement, represented in the above-mentioned works, results in the narrative construction of hybrid identities squeezed between two (or more) cultures, and that precisely this position of (non)belonging will enable a narrative re/definition of the cultural identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.