GLOBALIZATION, IDENTITY, COMMODITY: THE CASE OF STINKY ONION (TAMARA JECIĆ) AND THE PENULTIMATE JOURNEY (GORDANA ĆIRJANIĆ)

Text topic: Globalization and Literature

Text author: Ивана Марић

This paper discusses the issue of identity formation focusing on the transformative potential of hybridity, in two contemporary Serbian novels: Gordana Ćirjanić’s The Penultimate Journey (Pretposlednje putovanje, 2001) and Tamara Jecić’s Stinky Onion (Stinky Onion, 2009). The novels relate the stories of displacement of two Serbian migrants at the end of the 20th century. In their difficult endeavor to localize themselves in an increasingly globalized world, the protagonists negotiate their identities through computer-mediated communication and consumerist societies. Their identity formation is analyzed through a hybridity paradigm, which, as proposed by the postcolonial theoretician Homi Bhabha, has the potential to challenge the dominant mechanisms of the construction of meaning allowing for the emergence of new meanings and identities.