Abstract

This paper takes its cue from the two perspectives opened by the word «migration », importing on the one hand the physical phenomenon of migrating through space, and on the other the metaphorical meaning of translating words and ideas, theories, from text to text, and from place to place: the two uses have been associated in postmodern scholarly research, due to the impact of what is now commonly called spatial turn, i. e. the conversion from time-oriented to space-oriented interests and methods. A new awareness of space has favoured the crossing of boundaries between disciplines and orthodoxies, starting from the traditional work of philosophers and psycho-analysts, of economists and sociologists, historians and anthropologists. A short overview of such developments is provided, focusing in particular on the work of Clifford Geertz and James Clifford, and on the contemporary production of Edward W. Said and Homi Bhabha, two intellectuals originating from the former "periphery" of Western civilisation. They introduce us to the more specifically cultural aspects of the problem, adapting the tools of poststructuralist criticism to the analysis of a vast spectrum of cultural texts. Such books as Culture and Imperialism (1993) and The Location of Culture (1994) - are important landmarks in the general trend towards a constructive handling of space in critical practice. Original contributions in this perspective came from Iain Chambers - Migrancy, culture, identity (1994) - and Franco Moretti - especially his Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900 (1998) and Graphs, Maps, Trees. Abstract Models for Literary History (2005). The growth of spatiality into a fully-fledged theory came in Bertrand Westphal's La géocritique (2007). In his later Austro- fictions. Une géographie de l'intime (2010) Westphal discusses an Italian writer, Claudio Magris, as the champion of a new discipline: no mean acknowledgment though much overdue, as Magris had been practicing his brand of geocriticism for five full decades from the position of «un écrivain de la frontière» - the border between Italy and Mitteleuropa - reaching that eminent position especially in works such as Danubio (1986) and in one of the most important novels of the new century, Alla cieca (2005), through an existential and creative process, far from any stiff theoretical commitment.