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Eliminating Diasporic Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Iman Mersal
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Extract

In The unbearable lightness of being, Milan Kundera, a writer in diaspora, puts Sabina, a painter in diaspora, in the position of the artist facing the imposition of a ready-made identity. Kundera writes:

Sabina had once had an exhibit that was organized by a political organization in Germany. When she picked up the catalogue, the first thing she saw was a picture of herself with a drawing of barbed wire superimposed on it. Inside she found a biography that read like the life of a saint or martyr: she had suffered, struggled against injustice, been forced to abandon her bleeding homeland, yet was carrying on the struggle. “Her paintings are a struggle for happiness” was the final sentence.

She protested, but they did not understand her.

Do you mean that modern art isn't persecuted under Communism?

“My enemy is kitsch, not Communism!” she replied, infuriated.

(254)

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 5: Special Topic Comparative Racialization , October 2008 , pp. 1581 - 1589
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

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