Mike Baynham and Anna de Fina (eds.), Dislocations/relocations: Narratives of displacement

Extract

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.