UDSIGELSE OG KULTURMØDER: Om sammenhængen mellem postkolonial litteratur og ansættelse af nydanskere

Abstract

This article sets out to discuss how we may work with the notion of ‘cultural
 encounters’. Two examples are presented and discussed: One is drawn from the
 novel Monnè, outrages et défis (1990) by the prize-winning Ivorian author
 Ahmadou Kourouma. The other example refers to a job interview of an ethnic
 minority Dane in Denmark, published in a review by a Danish municipal
 administration (Århus Kommune) in 2003. The article brings a number of critical
 literary theories into dialogue in order to discuss two major points. First, the article
 shows how the chosen theoretical notions can help us to describe what happens
 in situations of communication where different, and possibly incommensurable,
 agents and contexts meet and interact in settings that are marked by conceptions
 of cultural differences. The theories used are Michel Foucault’s discursive formations,
 Emile Benveniste’s concept of enunciation, Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflexions of
 contrapuntal narratives, and Homi Bhabha’s theorisation of the anteriority of the
 sign as it occurs in a disjunctive temporality. Secondly, the article introduces a
 new interpretative method of how literary texts and critical literary theory may
 be used within anthropological studies. Instead of focusing on the notion of
 ‘identities’ and the ensuing conflicts between difference and sameness, this
 approach focuses on cultural articulations as dynamic communicative processes.
 In so doing, it situates itself within literary and anthropological theories of
 representation. Making a close reading of the chosen texts, the article shows that
 cultural encounters are never merely a question of ‘culture’. Cultural encounters
 become communicative scenarios where ideas, motives, intentions, and emotions
 are expressed, interpreted, and received by differently reacting agents.