Paper short abstract:

The process of physically traversing borders influences the way in which the body, as the bearer of identity, is interpreted and enacted - i.e. the way in which identity is performed. What is the link between the psychological understanding and the corporeal somatization of spatial displacement?

Paper long abstract:

The border is not just a geographical entity but any boundary between two distinct positions or conditions. The body, too, is a border for it separates our inner self from "the others"; it is the barrier shielding our ideas, opinions, personalities. It is also bounded by culture, that is, the body is interpreted and manipulated in accordance with the cultural and aesthetical practices of the social group to which it belongs. Thus, in the context of geographical displacement, the body of the traveller faces a twofold crossing of the border. The first is the obvious physical transition from one place to the other. The second (and more epistemological) consists in the re-reading of the body and its possible reinterpretation and rearrangement; this can be due to the change of the traveller's spirit resulting from the exposure to different lifestyles, customs, and aesthetical criteria and practices, as much as from the relation of the migrant with the natives of the host societies'. Through the analysis of two novels that recount the experiences of black female bodies as they move to and fro across borders, Ken Bugul's Riwan ou Le chemin de sable (1999) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013), this paper will explore the ways in which a body can be the physical remainder of someone's provenience, how it is turned into the place where identity is debated and contended, and the multiple possibilities for decoding and recoding it before, during, and after the departure from the homeland and return.