Dislocating Borders: The Writing of Place and the New Frontiers of Elsewhere Delocalizzare i confini. La scrittura dei luoghi e le nuove frontiere dell’altrove

The essay defines the new paradigm which has recently reshaped the representation of borders, frontiers and edges in contemporary travel writing. Focusing on a wide range of texts, taken from different linguistic and cultural contexts, the essay describes the changes which have delocalized the notion of border and turned it into a metatextual concept. From Chatwin and Theroux to Magris and Saramago, frontiers are no more perceived as geographical objects, but as autonomous spaces where to travel, wander and live. The essay demonstrates that this new conception of borders represents the essential basis for a new theory of cultural encounter, which replaced the traditional dialectics between we and the others with the postmodern notion of perpetual hybridization. Borders became what Homi Bhabha called the in-between : spaces of intercultural mediation, and thus metaphors of what the same travel writing should be. The essay defines the new paradigm which has recently reshaped the representation of borders, frontiers and edges in contemporary travel writing. Focusing on a wide range of texts, taken from different linguistic and cultural contexts, the essay describes the changes which have delocalized the notion of border and turned it into a metatextual concept. From Chatwin and Theroux to Magris and Saramago, frontiers are no more perceived as geographical objects, but as autonomous spaces where to travel, wander and live. The essay demonstrates that this new conception of borders represents the essential basis for a new theory of cultural encounter, which replaced the traditional dialectics between we and the others with the postmodern notion of perpetual hybridization. Borders became what Homi Bhabha called the in-between : spaces of intercultural mediation, and thus metaphors of what the same travel writing should be.