Space, Identity, and Ocean Crossings in Uribe's Bilbao-New York-Bilbao

This article analyzes the implications of Kirmen Uribe's Bilbao-New York-Bilbao's use of transoceanic structuring and maritime imagery to explore Basque identity. Through ocean motifs, the novel addresses questions central to minority national identity in a period of accelerated globalization and declining national sovereignty: how peripheral territories can relate to other parts of the world without resorting to defensive nationalism and without suffering or exacerbating homogenization and new forms of inequality. This essay argues that Uribe's ocean reconciles openness and movement with stability and retention of difference, opposite tendencies that are explored also in the book's meditations on the identity-generating discourses of memory and narrative literature.