The Role of Language in Creating Space

Another qualifier placed upon the idea of space is that it is constructed through language. A single place can exist and mean different things to different people until someone decides to define it through words. In that moment, a determined space is created. When constructing the Third Space, the use of language is not so simple since these Third Space inhabitants still have to struggle to find an appropriate and authentic voice (Ashcroft Griffiths and Tiffin 2002: 9).

However, the writing itself becomes the creation of the hybridized space: “Such writing is, in effect, an ethnography of the writer’s own culture. The post-colonial writer, whose gaze is turned in two directions, stands already in that position which will come to be occupied by an interpretation, for he/she is not the object of an interpretation, but the first interpreter” (Ashcroft,

Griffiths, Tiffin 2002: 60). Once again, the writer does not own the objective truth as to what the Third Space is, but the writer is allowed to interpret the space for himself.

These writers, therefore, must face a difficult decision of choosing a language in which to write. In the previous section on “the Other,” I discussed how both the native language and the new language are inadequate in expressing the plight of “the Other,” since both relegate the writer to alienation. For those attempting to inhabit a Third Space, this issue is exacerbated since choosing a language contradicts their search for an in-between as a way out of this alienation.

An example of this tension can be found in many writers’ comments on their continuing uncomfortable relationship with English. Ilan Stavans explains his own hesitant relationship with English in his writing:

Of course it took me no time to recognize that standard English was the lingua franca of the middle and upper classes, but its domain was in question in the lower strata of the population. In that segment, I wasn’t able to recognize the English I expected to hear: monolithic, homogenous, single-minded. Instead, I constantly awakened to a polyphonic reality (2003: 4).

Clearly, English represents ties to a colonial scheme and some authors feel the irony of using English for resistance writing, as if they are continuing the authority of the colonizer when writing in English (Ahmed 2008: 80). However, it is also true that of all Third Space writers, those receiving recognition are in fact those writing in English (Lazarus 2011: 26). This reluctant relationship with English reveals the need for a third language to reflect the Third Space. This is what M.M. Bakhtin expresses when explaining the idea of needing to locate oneself amidst several languages:

Consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language. With each literary-verbal performance, consciousness must actively orient itself amidst heteroglossia, it must move in and occupy a position within it, it chooses, in other words, a “language” (1981:

295, emphasis in the text).

As Bakhtin explains, the Third Space proposes the existence of more than one way to write within a language, allowing for a third language to exist.

Therefore, it is up to these occupants of the Third Space to find a language in-between in order to write their experiences. Frequently, this comes from a mixing of the two languages into a language that better reflects who they are. Stavans explains his dilemma as an occupant of the Third Space, being a Hispanic in New York, through his wondering: “Spanish or English: Which is the true Latino mother tongue? They both are, plus a third option: Spanglish— a hybrid. We inhabit a linguistic abyss: between two mentalities and lost in translation” (1996b: 154).

Deciding not to choose either one of the languages allows the writer to express his situation exactly how he experiences it, in a mix of the two. Rushdie also takes a similar approach to his use of English as a language for writing:

One of the changes has to do with attitudes towards the use of English. Many have referred to the argument about the appropriateness of this language to Indian themes. And I hope all of us share the view that we can’t simply use the language in the way the British did; that it needs remaking for our own purposes. Those of us who do use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free (2010: 17).

Rushdie admits the fact that he will continue to use English as his language for writing, but he does so with a certain hesitation. He insists that the language must change in order to reflect the Third Space; it cannot be “used” in the same way. Interestingly, Rushdie also speaks of

conquering the language as a reflection of conquering other struggles of the Third Space. For those who have had to form their identity from nothing, each step of the way is something to fight through, and Rushdie’s point is that the writing should reflect this struggle.

While these are two experiences from specific authors who have written from the Third Space, the theorists who write about language in the Third Space also support this new way of looking at language. English becomes a raw material ready to be manipulated into whatever is useful for the author as he expresses his perspective. This imagining creates world Englishes, or

englishes, that are not necessarily “broken” or filled with “errors,” but are new forms of using the language that reflect the writing of a Third Space inhabitant. As Chris Abani states, “There is, however, an incredible freedom in this, the sudden understanding that your language is fluid, must be, and that as a writer it is your duty to make this language even more plastic” (2011:

120). This statement reflects a new way of envisioning language: instead of a set of bound regulations and structures it becomes a mere building block adaptable to the desires and motives of the builder. Patricia Noxolo and Marika Preziuso share in this new way of looking at

language when they claim, “Language is created in and through materiality, and often bound up with the performance and reinforcement of material divisions, but, largely because of this, language also contains the resources for negotiation of meaning across those same material divides” (2012: 133). Therefore, by creating hybrids through the languages available to Third Space writers, creativity and unique perspectives can be gained.

This emotional state of living in the Third Space allows for a sort of self-examination that can lead to profound reflective writing. In a way, inhabiting the Third Space is a stripping away of the old culture and the strong ties of identity connected to that culture. There is also the comparative to the new culture and the subsequent identity adjustments that take place. This point of frustration produces the creative energy that spurs Third Space occupants on to write about their experiences. Salman Rushdie comments on this same principle: “the migrant

intellect roots itself in itself, in its own capacity for imagining and reimagining the world” (2010:

280). This “rooting itself in itself” is that same shift in identity that rejects both the old and the new and takes its foundation from an individualized experience, leaving room for new

perceptions about the world. However, while Rushdie paints this “reimagining” in an optimistic light, an “inbetweenness” is sometimes not available in such a “liberal or productive” space,

hence the existence of resistance literature emerging from some Third Space writers (Arrowsmith 1999: 61).

4 Those Occupying the Third Space

While in previous sections the inhabitants of the Third Space have been mentioned, it remains important to specify which groups of people might be included in the Third Space and why.

Before considering the specific groups associated with the Third Space, it must be pointed out that a few authors have ventured to describe the group as a whole, summing up in broader terms their defining characteristics. Some have portrayed the group as encompassing all minorities (Eade 1997: 1). Ilan Stavans identifies the group with a more poetical perspective by claiming that “We’re unstable: frágiles de espíritu. We simultaneously incorporate clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity” (1996b: 108). The useful part of looking at the group as a whole, as Stavans has done, is to notice that while the Third Space is mainly composed of three different groups, many individual and unique cases can belong in this group, which Edward Said also refers to when he states:

There are highly significant deformations within the new communities and states that now exist alongside and partially within the world-English group dominated by the United States, a group that includes the heterogeneous voices, various languages, hybrid forms that give Anglophonic writing its distinctive and still problematic identity (1994: 371, emphasis in the text).

The strongest and most accentuated word that Said uses is the word “deformations,” first because of the negative connotation of it, but also because it opens doors to whoever might not fit into the supposed mainstream voice of the nation.

4.1 Immigrants

One of the prominent groups that occupies the Third Space is immigrants either living in a different country or migrants who are constantly on the move. Even though the immigrant has chosen to abandon the old country and move to a new country, he still experiences the effects of

his decision perhaps more deeply than expected, especially in the area of identity. In a way, the immigrant paves his own road as he pioneers the differences between the new and old cultures.

Salman Rushdie explains this process by equating it to birth:

The notion of migration as a form of rebirth is one whose truths many migrants will recognize.

Instantly recognizable, too, and often very moving, is the sense of a writer feeling obliged to bring his new world into being by an act of pure will, the sense that if the world is not described into existence in the most minute detail, then it won’t be there. The immigrant must invent the earth beneath his feet (2010: 149).

Again, one can see how this process lends itself to writing, as Rushdie describes the immigrant writing his very own existence. Referencing more specifically the case of the migrant, who is constantly on the move and thereby continually shifting through different roles and spaces, this group is of special interest within the Third Space since they are often not just wrestling with the old and new spaces, but countless opposing spaces, making the creation of identity all the more fluid and unpredictable.

4.2 Exiles

Another separate group included in the Third Space is the exiled. While exiles have the same experience as immigrants of leaving one country for another, the emotions that accompany that voyage are vastly different from those of the immigrant. While both experience feelings of nostalgia when reflecting on their homes, the emotions felt by the exile are generally expressed more deeply in terms of longing, loss, and rejection. Edward Said speaks about this loss felt specifically by those who are exiles:

Exile is predicated on the existence of, love for, and a real bond with one’s native place; the universal truth of exile is not that one has lost that love or home, but that inherent in each is an unexpected, unwelcome loss. Regard experiences then as if they were about to disappear: what is it about them that anchors or roots them in reality? What would you save of them, what would you give up, what would you recover? To answer such questions you must have the

independence and detachment of someone whose homeland is “sweet”, but whose actual condition makes it impossible to recapture that sweetness, and even less possible to derive satisfaction from substitutes furnished by illusion or dogma, whether deriving from pride in one’s heritage or from certainty about who “we” are (1994: 407, emphasis in the text).

For the exiled, therefore, this exaggerated sense of nostalgia exists because of what has been taken away permanently and simply cannot be regained. There is also an added sense of violence when the occupant of the Third Space is writing from exile, if for no other reason than the very forceful action of removing that person from their home. Homi Bhabha looks at the violent nature of certain Third Space situations when he states: “Increasingly, the issue of cultural difference emerges at points of social crises, and the questions of identity that it raises are agonistic” (2004: 254). This form of occupying the Third Space is not so much of an

exploration of that space and its significance, but a pushing and pulling of a gravitational center.

Roger Bromley uses the word “unsettler” when referring to refugees, which brings to light the way in which exile stirs up questions about identity and borders in general, offering a unique perspective within the Third Space (2012: 345). As a result of this struggle, one can expect the literature emerging out of a position of exile to be more frequently marked by themes of

resistance.

4.3 Borderlines

The third category is less concretely defined than the previous two as it relates to those who are marginalized in society for a variety of reasons. Second generation immigrants, refugees, minorities that are unaccepted by society at large, those who have physical or mental disabilities or even those who have lost their homes could be included. Many of the researchers in the area of the Third Space have made reference to this third and purposefully ambiguous group. Stavans refers to these borderlines as “a never-never land near the rim and ragged edge we call frontier, an uncertain, indeterminate, adjacent area that everybody can recognize and that, more than ever before, many call our home— has been adapted, reformulated, and reconsidered” (1996b: 14).

The reference to never-never land is of particular interest since the borders that define this group

could emerge from countless unique situations, not necessarily at the border separating two countries. Salman Rushdie also approaches the idea that the Third Space does not only relate to those beginning a life in a new country:

Migration across national frontiers is by no means the only form of the phenomenon. In many ways, given the international and increasingly homogeneous nature of metropolitan culture, the journey from, for example, rural America to New York City is a more extreme act of migration than a move from, say, Bombay (2010: 278).

This search for identity among the displaced can also be found as members of a supposedly homogenous nation make dramatic changes in their location or even in their lifestyle. Borders, therefore, can exist both at the edges of a nation and even in the very center of a metropolis (Chekuri and Muppidi 2003: 56). Willy Maley echoes this thought when he states: “Sometimes crossing a border between two countries can present fewer difficulties than crossing a border within a country, an ‘internal border’” (1999: 32). Including these groups in the literature of the Third Space allows for the breakdown of the “imagined community” of the nation as the

narratives demonstrate that a community formed out of shared experience does not exist for all its inhabitants.

5 Characteristics of Literature Written from the Third Space

When considering the characteristics of literature from the Third Space, it is important to first recognize that within the literature there is a great variety of styles and techniques used. As Neil Lazarus explains, this opens up a new criterion for evaluating literature, being:

[T]he writer’s ability to show us what it feels like to live on a given ground— to show us how a certain socio-natural order is encountered, experienced, lived. The writer’s success or failure in this respect is not solely a function of “authenticity” at the level of content, but also of

imagination, dexterity, and telling judgment in the selection and manipulation of the formal resources of fiction (2011: 142).

Therefore, while the following characteristics tend to be representative of literature from the Third Space, this by no means guarantees that all literature will contain all of these

characteristics, nor should it, as each author aims to be original in his writing. Some writers tend toward a more political reaction while others dwell more on the psychological aspect of identity.

5.1 Political

One of the characteristics marking the literature from the Third Space is a political emphasis within the text. Since this literature is closely related to Postcolonialism, some authors use the concept of the Third Space in their politically-driven novels, stories, poems and plays that fight for the breaking down of the binary oppositions that existed in the colonial period. The Third Space is a useful strategy in this political aspect of postcolonial literature because it shows individual perspectives of hybridity. As Bhabha explains:

Hybridity is the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects. It unsettles the mimetic or narcissistic demands of colonial power but reimplicates its identifications in strategies of subversion that turn the gaze of the

discriminated back upon the eye of power. For the colonial hybrid is the articulation of the ambivalent space where the rite of power is enacted on the site of desire, making its objects at once disciplinary and disseminatory— or, in my mixed metaphor, a negative transparency (2004:

160).

By creating narratives that are full of hybridity, these authors can turn this patronizing “gaze”

back in the direction of the colonizer, upsetting the dominance that once favored the colonial scheme. Authors who take this political stance tend to feel strongly about their chosen style of writing, an example of which being Derek Walcott, who states, “Once the New World black had tried to prove he was as good as his master, when he should have proven not his equality but his difference. It was this stance that could command attention without pleading for respect” (1998:

9). This use of difference to prove a political point is common in resistance literature. Indeed, some of these more political scholars even claim that to speak only of the Third Space without mentioning the politics that created the need for it is to eliminate the oppressor and the oppressed from literature, in other words, to avoid the issue entirely (González and Fernandez 2003: 165).

As is evident in these examples, those who write from a political perspective within the Third

Space take on the role of a passionate protestor that other authors who focus more on the topics of identity and belonging tend to lack.

While this is one approach many authors take when writing about the Third Space, Bhabha is still wary of the long-term effects of such a strategy, and he insists on the importance

While this is one approach many authors take when writing about the Third Space, Bhabha is still wary of the long-term effects of such a strategy, and he insists on the importance