Transculturality, identity-relation and authorial rhizomatisation in Édouard Glissant, Luigi Meneghello and Salman Rushdie

Abstract

This paper wants to study how transculturality could not only be an interpretation tool ascribable to cultural studies. In fact, it does affect the writing act in a poetical and narratological way. Notably, we analyze Édouard Glissant, Luigi Meneghello and Salman Rushdie, three authors characterized by the social and anthropological crossing of the linguistic and political borders of the contemporary World Republic of Letters. Here transculturality is strongly tied to a given intentionality, resulting in worldly-novels characterized by a rhizomatic narrator. On the one hand the omniscient narrator (frequently in first person) holds the strings of the polyphony of different histories and voices. On the other hand, he jags himself in a multiplicity of figures and characters that do have real roles through narration. We carry out these lines through a study of the three authors’ essays, contextualizing them with different critical and theoretical voices on the subject, from cultural studies to narratology.