Language and Literature paper by Fodor, Mónika
I Just Feel Unique. Self-Reference and Self-Perception in Postmemory Narratives of Second and Third Generation Hungarian Americans
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
In this paper, I explain the ways in which storytellers construct their ethnic subjectivity using the inherited and often traumatic stories of their parents’ or grandparents’ experiences. For this purpose, I present a combined thematic, structural, and performance analysis of selected postmemory narratives collected in ethnographic interviews. Three main features of ethnicity as part of individual subjectivity have been central to the analysis: (1) the emphasis on choice concerning the individual’s ethnic heritage, (2) the flexibility of ethnicity as accessible complex narrative schemata of possible attitudes and decisions, (3) the negotiability of ethnicity in historical context-driven discourses. These features of self-perception support the seemingly paradoxical concurrence of declining objective ethnic differences and the new, subjective forms of ethnic identification with individually recognized value in ethnicity. The narrative analysis demonstrates how storytellers use positioning techniques in prototypical or Labovian and small story modes to deprive ethnicity of its original constraints of strictly imposed group norms or the necessary knowledge and use of the heritage language. I pinpoint how the language of the stories carries additional information about the relational values of ethnicity in one’s self-perception. In the selected narrative selfies, the idea of being “unique” is a pivotal concept recurring with a broad spectrum of potential meanings constructed in storytellers’ positive and negative experiences in connection with ethnic practices.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Monika Fodor works as Assistant Professor in the Department of English Literatures and Cultures at the University of Pécs. She teaches courses in American Studies, Applied Linguistics, and TESOL. Her research interest includes narratives, identity, ethnicity, oral histories and ethnographic fieldwork. She has authored book chapters and journal articles in the fields including narrative, identity, teaching culture and narrative, and translation studies. Currently, she is working on a book titled Ethnic Subjectivity in Postmemory Narratives: The Politics of the Untold which will be published by Routledge in 2019. In this academic year, Monika Fodor is a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. fodor.monika@pte.hu