UDSIGELSE OG KULTURMØDER: Om sammenhængen mellem postkolonial litteratur og ansættelse af nydanskere

Resumé

This article sets out to discuss how we may work with the notion of ‘cultural

encounters’. Two examples are presented and discussed: One is drawn from the

novel Monnè, outrages et défis (1990) by the prize-winning Ivorian author

Ahmadou Kourouma. The other example refers to a job interview of an ethnic

minority Dane in Denmark, published in a review by a Danish municipal

administration (Århus Kommune) in 2003. The article brings a number of critical

literary theories into dialogue in order to discuss two major points. First, the article

shows how the chosen theoretical notions can help us to describe what happens

in situations of communication where different, and possibly incommensurable,

agents and contexts meet and interact in settings that are marked by conceptions

of cultural differences. The theories used are Michel Foucault’s discursive formations,

Emile Benveniste’s concept of enunciation, Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflexions of

contrapuntal narratives, and Homi Bhabha’s theorisation of the anteriority of the

sign as it occurs in a disjunctive temporality. Secondly, the article introduces a

new interpretative method of how literary texts and critical literary theory may

be used within anthropological studies. Instead of focusing on the notion of

‘identities’ and the ensuing conflicts between difference and sameness, this

approach focuses on cultural articulations as dynamic communicative processes.

In so doing, it situates itself within literary and anthropological theories of

representation. Making a close reading of the chosen texts, the article shows that

cultural encounters are never merely a question of ‘culture’. Cultural encounters

become communicative scenarios where ideas, motives, intentions, and emotions

are expressed, interpreted, and received by differently reacting agents.