Regions of Identity

Originally motivated by the 2008 ‘European Year of Intercultural Dialogue’, the research agenda for this article is focussed on the ways in which cultural and literary practices have become marked as national or global. 1 The central question explored is whether and how regional literature may be said to mediate between different communities of cultural practice, and national cultural ‘territories’, in a way that crosses and interrogates established geo-political boundaries. In light of an intercultural approach to this question, it seems most fruitful to define Nordic literature as a site of interplay between plural, converging, but also seemingly contradictory regions of identity, a site of continuous change but, most importantly, of human agency, intercultural dialogue and ‘our ability to go beyond the limits set by our existing beliefs and practices’ (Callinicos 2006, p.243).