The Transcultural Rewriting of the Italian Ethnoscape

Abstract

The Transcultural Rewriting of the Italian Ethnoscape This paper explores the transcultural elements in contemporary Italian-Canadian women’s writing and analyzes how these writers incorporate local elements from their heritage cultures, from the host Canadian culture and from the mixing of these cultures within the Italian-Canadian context, in order to transcend boundaries, bridge cultures and languages, and open their writing up to broader, more globalized issues. Drawing on Appadurai’s theorization of global «scapes», it shows how these writers move away from the typical concerns of the previous tradition of Italian-Canadian writing and embrace global dimensions which allow them to rewrite the Italian diasporic «ethnoscape» and reimagine issues of identity and belonging in transnational spaces. By re-appropriating their heritage culture(s) in non-elegiac terms, their works make a significant contribution to the redefinition of notions of ethnicity, culture, nationality and female identity. In the light of cross-cultural negotiations and interactive polylogue among cultures, the essay explores the transcultural elements in contemporary Italian-Canadian women’s writing and analyzes how local elements from heritage and host cultures are incorporated in these writings in order to open up to globalization. DOI: 10.1400/204636