Abstract
The introductory chapter provides an overview of the historical, political and socio-cultural factors that make belonging such a central but fraught issue in contemporary Mauritius and in its literature. It explores recent theories of ‘belonging’ from a range of disciplines, in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the term for an analysis of the diversity of the Mauritian situation. It offers an overview of recent Mauritian literature and of critical approaches, in order to show how my own approach offers a new perspective and fills gaps. It introduces the main corpus and the criteria for selection, as well as outlining the central research questions and the eclectic theoretical framework adopted in the close readings of ensuing chapters. Throughout, I show how the Mauritian context provides fruitful grounds for testing the assertion, by scholars such as Vertovec or Antonsich, that ‘contemporary societies [are] characterised by the co-presence of a plurality of forms of belonging.’
Highlights
The Problem of Belonging in MauritiusBelonging – a sense of attachment to, and identification with, a place or people – is a fraught issue in the small, postcolonial island nation of Mauritius
My aim is to explore the diverse fictions of belonging evoked in the novels: both in the sense that Mauritian fiction is centrally concerned with issues of belonging and exclusion; and in the sense that the notion of belonging is always a highly performative and imaginative act of fiction
Contemporary Mauritian fiction consistently portrays belonging as an aim or an aspiration, rather than as a reassuring source of stability, identification and rootedness
Summary
Belonging – a sense of attachment to, and identification with, a place or people – is a fraught issue in the small, postcolonial island nation of Mauritius. Belonging is always a highly fluid and subjective concept, there are several interrelated, locally specific factors that make belonging especially contentious in modern-day Mauritius. These include, but are not limited to: the diverse, multiethnic composition of its population; the absence of an indigenous, precolonial culture; the island’s history of double (French and British) colonisation; its relatively recent transition to independence (in 1968); and its official, ethnically delineated, multicultural model of ‘unity in diversity’. My aim is to explore the diverse fictions of belonging evoked in the novels: both in the sense that Mauritian fiction is centrally concerned with issues of belonging and exclusion; and in the sense that the notion of belonging is always a highly performative and imaginative act of fiction
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