Paper Titles & Abstracts

In an era plagued by natural disasters, political conflicts and economic crises many nations in Europe have resorted to narratives of collective memory as a centrifugal point of mobilization, unity and solidarity. The significance of memory in nation-building has been emphasized by Paul Ricoeur's idea of collective memory as relationship between the self and her community and memory as the strand that enacts and re-enacts a network of relations among individuals and the societies which they belong. Although other great thinkers like Ernst Renan would slightly disagree with Ricoeur by highlighting the importance of historical error as a crucial factor in binding a nation and stating that historical studies often constitutes a danger for the principle of nationality. In-spite of these discordant voices a fact that cannot be disputed is that national days and commemorations lie at the core of the national and cultural of most nations in Europe.The proposed paper aims to focus on the various memorial narratives that thrive within multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in Europe like London and Paris. Apart from soliciting solutions, it will pose thought provoking questions like: Which memorial narratives are dominant and why? When former metropolitan centres like London are flooded with conflicting memories, what steps can be taken to resolve the tensions between the parties from both sides? Which events should be remembered and what should be forgotten among Europeans and postcolonial subjects? Through the famework of the theories of Postcolonialism and Transculturation, this paper will examine the Anglophone migrant texts of Abdulrazak Gurnah and the Francophone texts of Fatou Diome to explore how postcolonial migrant subjects in the margins of London and Paris grapple with the traumas of colonial memories and negotiate identity and exclusion through textual narratives.