Mike Baynham and Anna de Fina (eds.),
Dislocations/relocations: Narratives of displacement.
Manchester, UK & Northampton, MA: St. Jerome, 2005. Pp. 262. Pb.
£19.99.
Clearly announced in the title, the topic of this collection of essays
is the experience of spatial displacement conveyed through narrative by
the individuals who undergo it. The authors approach it as a theoretical
and methodological problem in narrative studies, as well as an opportunity
for reflecting on a social and political phenomenon – the (forced or
freely chosen) movement of people – that has come to be seen as
central to the experience of modernity (2). The project is very ambitious.
It not only seeks to make a conceptual contribution to the already vast
and multidisciplinary literature on narrative, but also hopes to address
enough instances of discursive practices that involve migrants and
minorities around the world to be able to claim that it sheds light on the
general phenomenon of displacement. Overall, the book is stronger when it
addresses its second objective, and it offers a multi-layered and
comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of dislocation as captured
through narrative practices. What contributes to the success of the book
are, in addition to the quality of the individual contributions, its
rigorous organization in parts that cohere conceptually and thematically,
the clear justification of the project offered by the two editors in an
excellent introduction, and the concluding remarks by James Collins, which
leave the reader with a sense of a consistent intellectual product.