ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 focusses on the marginalised diaspora so as to show how they capture the truths of colonialism, postcolonialism and partition. The Cypriot diaspora refers to Anglophone, Hellenophone and Turkophone authors that are part of various (post)colonial migratory waves related to internal and external displacements, including those who departed from, remained in and/or returned to Cyprus. The chapter explores a range of literary movements, translation projects and publishing ventures, which demonstrate ethno-/bi-/multi-communal and lingual initiatives with transnational literary turns. Focus is mainly on Anglophone writers Stephanos Stephanides, Aydin Mehmet Ali and Alev Adil who were part of the largest migration to Britain, whilst other authors – i.e. Taner Baybars, Nora Nadjarian, Niki Marangou and Gurgenc Korkmazel, amongst others – inconsistently arrive and depart. The chapter shows how these writers adopt a hospitable positionality and production through the ‘whale of space’, a literary-lived site understood via Wilson Harris’ ‘womb of space’, the Ottoman Linobambakoi, and Lefebvre’s ‘rhythmanalysis’ meeting three concrete metaphors – balcony, the middle sea and the whale. Through this site, the diaspora identify with multiple positions that carry the weight of diasporic and Cypriot experiences within the colonial, postcolonial and partitioned moments; these experiences relay official and unofficial, and dominant and marginalised narratives, negotiating with different places and spaces – i.e. north and south, country and city, London, Greece, Nicosia, Turkey, beyond – different times, and different energies that capture the making and breaking of multiple-mutable identifications and Cypruses. Five identifications and Cypruses will be discussed through various concepts and theoretical approaches, including Bart-Moore Gilbert’s postcolonial life-writing, Derrida’s supplement, Hall’s, Gilroy’s and Said’s work on the diaspora, Bhabha’s hybridity, translation, third-space, Rushdie’s and Achebe’s language and home, Boym’s reflective nostalgia and global diasporic solidarity. In this way the chapter and book capture not only a nuanced understanding of the actual production of colonial, postcolonial and partition, but also the best possible model to understand sites of conflict like Cyprus. Thus, offering a distinct ‘solidarity’ that captures the ‘truth of space’ and place for a ‘differential’ transnational Cyprus, Mediterranean and world we can all inhabit.
