Bios and subjectivity : migration in life-story narration
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.6, No.1, 1998, pages 87-116
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87-116
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The experience of transatlantic labor migration from Greece to the United States led to the cultural production of dominant images of migrant subjectivity and nationhood during the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis provides an account of the interrelation among nationalism, migration, subjectivity and history and is based on the study of specific levels of cultural production: life-stories, biographies and autobiographies. Life-stories, published in newspapers and magazines, and biographies written by community intellectuals such as Demetrios Calimachos codified the experience of migration and operated as means of propagating exemplary versions of ethnic/national identity within the migrant communities. Based on the analysis of this material, it is argued that migrant representations of subjectivity constituted historical demonstrations of the possibility and the need to transform and re-signify the content and the form of fixed notions of national identities.
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