The Unsettling Portrayal of Migrant Existence in Rawi Hage’s Urban Fiction
Abstract This essay considers the function of the grotesque mode in Rawi Hage’s novels Cockroach (2008) and Carnival (2012). The grotesque is a provocative tool with which Hage draws attention to the predicament of the class of poor and disadvantaged new immigrants in contemporary Montreal. He offers a male immigrant’s unsettling perspective on the Canadian multicultural ideal that proclaimsthe acceptance of ethnic and racial difference.Formal aspects that generate a grotesque effect include the first-person narrator’s self-image, his disruptive discourse of resistance, his disorienting view of urban reality, and spatial metaphors in the context of the protagonist’s social alienation and marginalisation. Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection throws light on the sense of fear and repulsion felt towards the urban poor, and on the protagonist’s deliberate identification with vermin in the context of his discourse of resistance.Even though the underprivileged migrant is able to answer back, Hage’s novels are devoid of true regenerative and liberating power. The literary texts give prominence to the migrant’s isolation and socio-economic outsider position. Nonetheless, the grotesque mode also functions as a powerful tool with which the author depicts the recent immigrant as someone with a resilient and mobile identity.
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Libin, Mark. “Marking Territory: Rawi Hage’s Novels and the Challenge to Postcolonial Ethics.” English Studies in Canada 39. 4 (2013): 71-90. Web. 5 Jan. 2017.
Perttula, Irma. “The Grotesque. Concepts and Characteristics.” The Grotesque and the Unnatural. Eds. Salmela Markku & Jarkko Toikkanen. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2011. 17-42.
Rushdie, Salman. Step Across This Line. Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002. New York: Random House, 2002.
Sakr, Rita. “Imaginative Migrations: an Interview with the Lebanese-Canadian Writer Rawi Hage.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47. 3 (2011): 343-351. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.
Subha, Xavier. The Migrant Text. Making and Marketing a Global French Literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016.
Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque. London: Methuen, 1972.
Astruc, Rémi. Le renouveau du grotesque dans le roman du xxe siècle. Essai d’anthropologie littéraire. Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier , 2010.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.
Ball, John C. Satire & the Postcolonial Novel. V.S. Naipaul, Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Beneventi, Domenic A. “Montreal Underground.” Journal of Canadian Studies/ Revue d’études canadiennes 46. 3 (2012): 263-286. Web. 7 Mar. 2017.
Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions. The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1994.
Booker, Keith M. Techniques of Subversion in Modern Literature. Transgression, Abjection, and the Carnivalesque. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991.
Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses. Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.
Braidotti, Rosi Transpositions. On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006.
Connelly, Frances S. The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture. The Image at Play. Cambridge UP, 2012.
Dobson, Kit. “Neoliberalism and the Limits of the Human: Rawi Hage’s Cockroach.” Textual Practice 29. 2 (2015): 255-271. Web. 1 Mar. 2017.
Donn, Katharina. “Migration and the Grotesque in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.” Anglia. Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie 131. 1 (2013): 100-120.
Edwards, Justin D. and Rune Grauland. Grotesque. The New Critical Idiom. Oxon: Routledge, 2013.
Fuß, Peter. Das Groteske. Ein Medium des kulturellen Wandels. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2001.
Hage, Rawi. De Niro’s Game. Toronto: Anansi Press, 2006.
Hage, Rawi. Cockroach. Toronto: Anansi Press, 2008.
Hage, Rawi. Carnival. Toronto: Anansi Press, 2012.
Hurley, Kelly. “Abject and Grotesque.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Eds. Catherine Spooner and Emma Mc Evoy . London: Routledge, 2007. 137-146.
Hout, Syrine. Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction. Home Matters in the Diaspora. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012.
Hutcheon, Linda. “The Carnivalesque and Contemporary Narrative: Popular Culture and the Erotic.” University of Ottawa Quarterly 53. 1 (1983): 84-94. Web. 5 Feb. 2017.
Jenks, Chris. Transgression. London: Routledge, 2003.
Kamboureli, Smaro. Scandalous Bodies. Diasporic Literature in English Canada. Oxford UP, 2000.
Kanaganayakam, Chelva. “Exiles and Expatriates.” New National and Post-Colonial Literatures. An Introduction. Ed. Bruce King. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 201-13.
Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Trans. U. Weisstein. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1963.
Keefer, Janice Kulyk. “From Dialogue to Polylogue. Canadian Transcultural Writing During the Deluge.” Difference and Community. Canadian and European Cultural Perspectives. Eds. Peter Easingwood, Konrad Gross and Lynette Hunter. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 59-70.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection. Trans. L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.
Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves, Trans. L. S. Roudiez, New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
Kristeva, Julia. “Cultural Strangeness and the Subject in Crisis.” Interview by Suzanne Clark and Kathleen Hulley. Julia Kristeva Interviews. Ed. R. M. Guberman. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. 35-58.
Lapierre, Maude. “Refugees and Global Violence: Complicity in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50. 5 (2014): 559-570. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.
Libin, Mark. “Marking Territory: Rawi Hage’s Novels and the Challenge to Postcolonial Ethics.” English Studies in Canada 39. 4 (2013): 71-90. Web. 5 Jan. 2017.
Perttula, Irma. “The Grotesque. Concepts and Characteristics.” The Grotesque and the Unnatural. Eds. Salmela Markku & Jarkko Toikkanen. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2011. 17-42.
Rushdie, Salman. Step Across This Line. Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002. New York: Random House, 2002.
Sakr, Rita. “Imaginative Migrations: an Interview with the Lebanese-Canadian Writer Rawi Hage.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47. 3 (2011): 343-351. Web. 1 Feb. 2017.
Subha, Xavier. The Migrant Text. Making and Marketing a Global French Literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016.
Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque. London: Methuen, 1972.
Staels, H. (2020). The Unsettling Portrayal of Migrant Existence in Rawi Hage’s Urban Fiction. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 7. Retrieved from https://revistas.usal.es/dos/index.php/2254-1179/article/view/31180
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