Writing Cyprus : postcolonial and partitioned literatures of place

This thesis puts Cyprus on the colonial, postcolonial and partitioned map through reading the contemporary literatures of divided Cyprus. This study is not only the first fully to investigate the silenced literary voices of Cyprus, but is the flrst fully to read the bypassed colonial, postcolonial a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kemal, Bahriye
Published: University of Kent 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.655652
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Summary:This thesis puts Cyprus on the colonial, postcolonial and partitioned map through reading the contemporary literatures of divided Cyprus. This study is not only the first fully to investigate the silenced literary voices of Cyprus, but is the flrst fully to read the bypassed colonial, postcolonial and partitioned condition of Cyprus. It is a new way of writing Cyprus that is of pivotal significance for the island, as well as for postcolonial and partition discourse. The thesis provides for Cyprus a new narrative to go beyond and contest its bloody binary legacy of historico-political 'deadlock' discourse. The case of Cyprus inspires new grounds for the meeting of postcolonial and partition studies, and the meeting of western and non-western imperial regimes within postcolonial discourse. The study of 'place' generates these new narratives and meetings because in all cases 'place' is the most significant force; it is a tool of thought, action, domination and liberation, but it escapes from all those people who make use of it. In light of this, through Cyprus I propose a new model for the study of place that will acknowledge and interrogate, and that can expose and carry, the power of place in postcolonial and partition discourse. This model is a hyper-complex spatial tripling situated between different understandings of place, which brings together postcolonial-partition, humanistic-geography and socio-philosophical scholarship: the complex process of place in postcolonial and partition discourse is coupled with Yi-Fu Tuan's notion of place and space and meets with Henri Lefebvre's space. It is Cyprus that enables the formation of this model, and through using it I examine and capture the processes and practices by which the Cypriot writers actively read and construct a place for themselves. In examining the actual production of place, I capture types of identification intimately shared by the Cypriots who have been divided for decades, if not centuries. In examining the actual production of colonial, postcolonial and partitioned Cyprus, I capture a new Cypriot solidarity in a differential Cyprus. The case of Cyprus suggests that the most powerful force that determines and controls all colonial, postcolonial and partitioned identification and practices is the production of place.