Postcolonial Cultural Hybridity and Cultural Ambivalence in Contemporary Italy: Amara Lakhous's Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008)

ABSTRACT

Recent social and political crises in the Middle East and North Africa have forced many people to seek refuge in Europe or elsewhere. Many research studies, films and novels have documented these migrants’ and refugees’ daily struggles to settle and grow roots in an migration space itself permeated by hostility and rejection. This article offers a close analysis of Amara Lakhous's novel, Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2006) and looks at the act of passing as a postcolonial strategy of cultural and social integration with specific regard to the main protagonist's position and point of view. It draws on the findings and theories of postcolonial studies and comparative approaches to culture. The last section of the article discusses Lakhous's linguistic hybridity as a subversive intervention in contemporary Italian discourse on national identity and national literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonialism
• migration
• hybridity
• cultural identity
• passing
• exile
• Amara Lakhous
• Italy
• self-invention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mustapha Hamil is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Windsor, Canada. He teaches Arabic literature and culture in English translation. He also teaches Francophone literature of North Africa and the Middle East. He has published extensively on Arabic and French literature and culture. He is currently working on a book project on prison literature in Morocco.