VERIFICACIÓN DE LA IDEA A DEFENDER

Transformations in the black literary scene presented a ‘sea change’ claims R. Victoria Arana. Paul Gilroy postulates:

the last few years have witnessed the birth of a new cultural and social movement that is broader than merely academic and broader than specifically literary: it is multicultural and multiracial (Anglo-Indian, Anglo- Pakistani, Anglo-Caribbean, Anglo-African) mobilization that is proclaiming itself loudly from hundreds of platforms and stages around the British Isles and popularly and officially styling itself as nothing less magnificent than “Re-inventing Britain”.98_{(Arana, 2004)}

98  _{Paul Gilroy, Keynote speech at the international “Re-inventing Britain” conference (March}

However, such proclamations from different regions of the British Isles away from the metropolitan ‘hub’ of London have been somewhat overlooked in relation to the abundance of articulations from the ‘centre’. This is because the geography of Britain has traditionally provided us with the powerful metaphor of the ‘centre’ and the ‘periphery’ and its analogous assumptions of inclusion and exclusion, dominance and subordination as well as access and denial.99 _{It is my contention that in order to gain a more comprehensive}

understanding of this re-invention of Britain around the British Isles, a movement away from the dominant metaphors is necessary, supplanting them with a paradigm shift towards ‘liminality’. I argue that the articulations of new generation multi-ethnic literary and cultural artists from the regions of the Britain, can be best understood through the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ reflecting the transitions shaping an individual’s temporal, spatial and social experience. New generation Britons, ‘Liminal Britons’ as I term them, increasingly find themselves located in multicultural spaces across Britain where they are compelled to negotiate complexities of existence. They are characterised by a peculiar sense of unity, being neither wholly British nor belonging entirely to their ethnic background, they are something else besides – located in an in-between space. Occupying certain phases within a ‘liminal’ spectrum, these Britons are in constant transition and refract multiplicity of their existence. It is their unique perception of Britishness, resulting from their constantly shifting positioning, that is reflected in their                                                                                                                          

99  _{Robert Hewison has suggested an alternate metaphor of the ‘net’ of connections,}

exemplifying Bhabha’s concept of ‘social ethics of proximity’. Hewison’s image contains within it suggestions of “safety, flexibility, not entrapment, and it is institutionally supported at many points”. This is projected as a more equalising stance as through this motif, Hewison argues that “instead of hierarchy, there is equality; instead of domination, communication” which provides a democratic and uniform structure rather than a tiered hierarchy that was in existence in Britain for so many years. (Hewison, 1997)  

articulations and have engendered the ‘sea-change’ that Arana and Hall indicate.

Elucidating the changes in the literary scene in the last two decades, Stuart Hall points to a significant shift in black cultural politics. In his opinion there are two phases of the same movement which “overlap and interweave”, both being “framed by the same historical conjuncture and both rooted in politics of antiracism and the post-war black experience in Britain” which have engendered this shift. (Hall, 1996: 163) In an attempt to characterize these moments, Hall contends that the former phase was “grounded in particular political and cultural analysis” when ‘black’ was used as a generalising term for referencing “common experience of racism and marginalization in Britain” across communities with different “histories, traditions and ethnic identities”, consequently relegating blacks to a position at the margins rendering them to the category of the “unspoken and invisible ‘other’ of predominantly white aesthetic and cultural discourses”. This was also the basis of formation of the following phase, which embodies a cultural politics “designed to challenge, resist, and, where possible, transform the dominant regimes of representation”. (Hall, 1996:163-4) The work of this new generation of black British writers fashioning a sea-change in the literary landscape, also demonstrates the representation that was upheld by black artists to contest marginality and stereotypical portrayal of black images. Such a stance advocates a “positive black imagery” (p164) which is widely exemplified in their writing.

These ‘new breed’ of young writers interpret Britain from the perspective of their personal black British experience and are resolute in

asserting that “the future of Britain is ....as much theirs to decide as anyone’s. It is a birthright”. (Arana, 2004) The “neo-millennial avant-garde” as R. Victoria Arana has branded them, have a subjectivity that is derived from a national belonging that is no longer culturally alienated or intimidated by the ‘white’ gaze. By assuming a more validated right to managing the British socio-political affairs, Arana claims that they have stimulated a movement that is redefining ‘Britishness’.(Arana, 2004)

Designing a new template of what it is to be ‘British’, the distinguishing characteristic of these writers is that, they are in a constant state of flux and the language, themes and imagery used by them are distinct from their predecessors. (Sesay, 2004) Characterised by ‘liminality’, these new generation women have multiple identities which they adopt at various points in their lives in the effort to negotiate existence in contemporary Britain. The literary expressions of these ‘Liminal Britons’, as I would like to call these new generation women writers, are also characterised by such ‘liminality’ as their protagonists often find themselves caught ‘betwixt and between’ different polarities and their lives are engulfed by a ‘complexity and inconsistency of meaning’ as theorised by Turner. Like their authors, they too possess agency and power to challenge and resist hegemonic oppression and are simultaneously disabled and enabled by their predicament. The novelist Andrea Levy suggests: “As black British writers, we are kind of making it up as we go along, we don’t have any sense of something else.

We’ve only got this culture to go on”. (Sesay, 2004) This assertion reinforces the fact that the new generation already assume themselves to be British

unlike the “middle wave” writers who wrote “largely for a British audience”.100 This kind of change has been further illuminated by Usha Prajar, the Chair of the Cultural diversity Advisory and Monitoring Committee, who points to a new stage in Britain’s cultural development claiming “a shift from margins to mainstream, from communities to society – and this shift, this transformation, has taken place in the last twenty years”, highlighting its recent reconstruction.101 _{(Prajar, 1997: 21)}

The immense transformative movement stimulated by the ‘neo- millennial consciousness’ of the new generation black and Asian writers has had a profound impact on the literary production in Britain and warranted an expansion of the British literary canon. A consideration of the role of regional presses in disseminating such literature is necessary to gain a clear understanding as to how black British literature has commanded its prominence and gained an entrance into the mainstream literary canon of Britain.