Lost in Transculturation: Evicted Travellers in Lily Brett’s Things Could Be Worse and Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces

In a recent book titled The Grammar of Identity, Stephen Clingman addresses the notion of the “transnational self” as intrinsically transitive or navigational, by which he implies both the internal and external navigation, as well as the navigation between one self and the others. In his view, “navigation does not mean crossing or having crossed, but being in the space of crossing,” as in “accepting placement as displacement, position as disposition.” This interpretation of the transnational encompasses to a large extent the transcultural, itself understood as both a navigation across or negotiation of differences within the one self and between other selves. Thus, if the transnational and transcultural can be imagined as the transitional space between differences or boundaries, which Clingman regards as absolutely necessary for the possibility of navigation, then the transnational identity, and more specifically the migrant identity emerges as both nomadic and hybrid. As such, a transnational identity inhabits the space of crossing or the location of dislocation (be it national, cultural, etc.), while at the same time probing the various possibilities or combinations within itself or with other selves, as manifested through the so-called “transitive versions of identity”. Among the many categories covered by the notion of the transnational are also those identities “for whom the transnational is not a matter of choice,” as in the case of individuals affected by postwar forced migration. Thus, the