Spatial Practices in Caryl Phillips’s Writing: Fluidity and Patchworking
Spatial Practices in Caryl Phillips’s Writing: Fluidity and Patchworking

Author(s): Murat Öner
Subject(s): British Literature
Published by: Naučnoistraživački institut »Ibn Sina«
Keywords: Caryl Phillips; Geocriticism; Migration; Nomadism; Patchworking; Smoothing;
Summary/Abstract: Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts and raised in England; he now lives in the United States. Phillips has traveled and taught in various institutions around the globe. Phillips’s physical and fictional border-crossings imitate the African’s passages across the Atlantic. All Phillipsian migrant and exilic characters undergo some form of transgression, either traumatic or self-exploratory, in search of new lives and homes to sink “hopeful roots into difficult soil.” This paper argues that Phillips remodels these deterritorialized characters by turning them into nomads—inhabitants of the smooth space. Nomads attempt to smooth “striations” with their movements. Nomadic existence necessitates the deprivation of spatiotemporal anchoring. Nomads who possess no history use geography for their fluid passages according to Deleuze and Guattari. This paper also aims to discuss how Phillips uses a “patchwork” form in his stories of migrant and exilic experiences. Patchwork represents trajectories and movement in an open space.

• Details
• Contents