Fiction Non Fiction: Cahier I

Artist Bruno Zhu’s project on the perception of migratory phenomena and the creation of identity and nationalist narratives.

Fiction Non Fiction is a series of readers that pairs voices engaged in literary criticism with the material histories of labo ur, gender and race. Each publication proposes a close reading of fictitious and theoretical works to understand how identity politics have been narrativized by liberal institutions across space and time.

Cahier I, published on the occasion of Out, Bruno Zhu’s commission at M HKA, Antwerp, addresses the fictioning of the migrant subject. Liesbeth Minnaard highlights the several movements embedded in the writing and publishing of Moroccan-Dutch writer Hafid Bouazza’s short story “De oversteek”. Bambi Ceuppens recounts the presence of autochthony discourses in Flanders and how they embolden the refusal to share welfare resources with immigrants.
Featuring an introduction by Irit Rogoff that articulates ‘propositionality’ as a paradigm shift, Cahier I departs from Dutch-speaking world to unpack nationalist tendencies set off by the arrival of the migrant.