Precariously Transnational: Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief
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Cordula Lemke
Abstract
In my chapter, I examine how the narrator of Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief both employs and questions a colonising form of exoticism from a hegemonic, transnational perspective. Teju Cole’s first novel deals with the narrator’s temporary return to his homeland in the form of a travel blog, which presents the actual events at the beginning of the narrative almost in the form of a travel guide. The promise of authenticity in this illustrated description is reinforced by quasiautobiographical insertions, which initially obstruct the reader’s view of the colonising attributions of the narrative perspective, but then reinforce it. It is only a meeting with his former girlfriend that leads to the narrator experiencing a sense of renewed belonging with his hometown and to the fading of exoticising strategies. Still, the transnationalism of one’s own perspective becomes the object of negotiation and the hegemonic construction of identity the precarious place of one’s own vulnerability, which the narrator can only evade through renewed spatial distance.
Abstract
In my chapter, I examine how the narrator of Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief both employs and questions a colonising form of exoticism from a hegemonic, transnational perspective. Teju Cole’s first novel deals with the narrator’s temporary return to his homeland in the form of a travel blog, which presents the actual events at the beginning of the narrative almost in the form of a travel guide. The promise of authenticity in this illustrated description is reinforced by quasiautobiographical insertions, which initially obstruct the reader’s view of the colonising attributions of the narrative perspective, but then reinforce it. It is only a meeting with his former girlfriend that leads to the narrator experiencing a sense of renewed belonging with his hometown and to the fading of exoticising strategies. Still, the transnationalism of one’s own perspective becomes the object of negotiation and the hegemonic construction of identity the precarious place of one’s own vulnerability, which the narrator can only evade through renewed spatial distance.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction: The Concept of the Transnational in Literary Studies 1
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1 The Transnational amongst Related Concepts in Theory and Marketing
- Mixed Attachments in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana (1971) 21
- Transnational Challenges for World Literatures: Publishing Caribbean Writers 44
- “Transnational Decolonial Aesthetics”: The “Hottentot Venus” Re-Configured 56
- Precariously Transnational: Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief 76
- The Discursive Construction of Transnational Fiction on Penguin Random House Group Websites 89
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2 Transnational Literary Histories
- Utopia, Limited: Transnational Utopianism and Intercultural Imaginaries of the Ideal 107
- Travel Literature and/as Transnational Theatre History – Beyond National Theatre Cultures 124
- Transnationally Forged Nationality: Le Brésil littéraire and the Writing of Literary History in the Nineteenth Century 142
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3 Poetics and Politics of Transnational Genres
- Historical Horizons: The Historical Novel and Transnational Memory 169
- Re-centring European Geopolitics: Transnational Identities in the Twenty-First- Century Hungarian-Language Novel from Slovakia 189
- Transnational Migrant Fiction as World Literature: Identity, Translatability, and the Global Book Market 206
- Translinguistic Theatre for a Globalised Stage? 226
- Works Cited 239
- Notes on Contributors 259
- Index 263
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction: The Concept of the Transnational in Literary Studies 1
-
1 The Transnational amongst Related Concepts in Theory and Marketing
- Mixed Attachments in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana (1971) 21
- Transnational Challenges for World Literatures: Publishing Caribbean Writers 44
- “Transnational Decolonial Aesthetics”: The “Hottentot Venus” Re-Configured 56
- Precariously Transnational: Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief 76
- The Discursive Construction of Transnational Fiction on Penguin Random House Group Websites 89
-
2 Transnational Literary Histories
- Utopia, Limited: Transnational Utopianism and Intercultural Imaginaries of the Ideal 107
- Travel Literature and/as Transnational Theatre History – Beyond National Theatre Cultures 124
- Transnationally Forged Nationality: Le Brésil littéraire and the Writing of Literary History in the Nineteenth Century 142
-
3 Poetics and Politics of Transnational Genres
- Historical Horizons: The Historical Novel and Transnational Memory 169
- Re-centring European Geopolitics: Transnational Identities in the Twenty-First- Century Hungarian-Language Novel from Slovakia 189
- Transnational Migrant Fiction as World Literature: Identity, Translatability, and the Global Book Market 206
- Translinguistic Theatre for a Globalised Stage? 226
- Works Cited 239
- Notes on Contributors 259
- Index 263
