Décalage and borderscaping in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears

Abstract

This article examines how bordering practices can play significant roles in liberating black diaspora formation from racial and historical positionings. Through the use of Brent Hayes Edwards’ concept of décalage, I propose that the space of black immigrant can be negotiated, and when doing so, negotiation allows for new forms of belongings to be produced in transnational contexts. In understanding the construction of African diaspora identity as the production of décalage, I argue that The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears sunders its characters into individuals in a way they reshape their identities together through delaying their belonging in time and shifting positions in space. The article thus concludes that décalage is rooted in the borderscapes of black and white communities, as a space that helps characters generating new transnational identities.

Keywords:

• Décalage
• borderscapes
• diaspora
• border crossing

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kamal Sbiri

Kamal Sbiri is Associate Professor and Vice Dean at the Faculty of Languages, Arts, and Humanities of Ibn Zohr University, Morocco. His research centers on migration, mobility, and transnational narratives of identity and border. He has published the book Voices from the Margin (2012) and authored several essays on the issues of migration and mobility. His most recent publication is the coedited volume Mobile Identities: Race, Ethnicity, and Borders in Contemporary Literature and Culture with Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2020.