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The “North” and the “Idea of Iceland”: Contemporary Cross-Cultural Construction of Representations of Iceland
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Daniel Chartier, “ ‘The North’ and the ‘Idea of Iceland’: Contemporary Cross-Cultural Construction of Representations of Iceland,” in Iceland and Images of the North, ed. Sumarliði R. Ísleifsson with the collaboration of Daniel Chartier, Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, “Droit au Pôle” series, and Reykjavík: ReykjavíkurAkademían, 2011. The “North” and the “Idea of Iceland”: Contemporary Cross-Cultural Construction of Representations of Iceland1 Daniel Chartier Université du Québec à Montréal (Québec, Canada) Abstract – This article studies a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary process that leads to the creation of some new artistic representations of Iceland. This process began with an academic conference about the images of the North and the production of children’s drawings about the idea of the North, which resulted in the creation of a book of fiction by a foreign author and its translation into Icelandic. This study highlights the relationship between research and artistic creation and the nature of stereotypes and clichés about the North, the Arctic, and Iceland, as well as the relationship between the national and universal content of the images produced. Keywords – Iceland, Québec, children’s drawings, literature, writer, images, representations, stereotypes, research and artistic creation The Idea of “Place” Iceland, like any other “place,” exists as both representation and reality. As a representation, produced by different discourses, it should be regarded as “the idea of Iceland,” which must be understood, analyzed, and interpreted as a broad and complex combination of internal discourse (from Icelanders about themselves), external discourse (from foreigners about Iceland), and a variety of elements taken from pre-existing discourses (insularity, the North, Scandinavia, and many others) to which Iceland may be linked. The relationship between how it is perceived, what others consider it to be, and what Iceland considers itself to be must be taken into 1 Translated in English by Elaine Kennedy. ICELAND AND IMAGES OF THE NORTH [ 514 ] account, even if the fact remains that this confronts us, as always, with discursive representations, some of which are based in reality, while others are imagined. Therefore, we consider all representations, images, and stereotypes that constitute the image of Iceland as “a hub of representations” that defines the “idea of Iceland.” Inspired by a multidisciplinary approach to the production of representations in a context linking research and artistic creation, this study takes as an example the case of a bidirectional creative process about Iceland between researchers, children, and a writer. The question here is not to consider the production of these representations as crucial to the whole “idea of Iceland,” but rather to study, by a dialectical approach, the influences created by researchers in a context of creation (and vice versa) and to evaluate the stereotypes and idées reçues that emerge from it. Representations are generated by and accumulated through competing discourses. This process allows us to measure representations of the image of Iceland. In addition to imagology, this study relies on works written by Hans Robert Jauss2 and Wolfgang Iser3 in particular, on the hermeneutics of reception and on the ideological and sociological analysis of discourse (Mark Angenot,4 Pierre Bourdieu5), on the study of stereotypes and idées reçues (Ruth Amossy6), as well as applications that were made in the “national” contexts by Micheline Cambron,7 Dominique Perron,8 and Régine Robin.9 In this context, I propose to study the cross-cultural and crossdisciplinary process that began with an academic conference and the production of children’s drawings (“Images of the North” in Reykjavík in February, 2006) and led to the creation of a book of fiction (by Lise Tremblay) and its translation, all of which involve 2 Jauss 1988, 1990. 3 Iser 1978. 4 Angenot 1989, 1997. 5 Bourdieu 1992. 6 Amossy 1991; Amossy & Herschberg Pierrot 1997. 7 Cambron 1989. 8 Perron 2006. 9 Robin 2003. [204.236.220.47] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:16 GMT) THE “NORTH” AND “THE IDEA OF ICELAND” [ 515 ] different representations of the North and of Iceland. My focus is on the process but also on the drawings and story themselves, which will highlight the nature of stereotypes and clichés about the North, the Arctic, and Iceland, and the relationship between the national and universal content of the images produced. “Stereotype,” as the essayist Ruth Amossy attempted to define it in terms of neutral textual analysis, is a useful concept in order to understand the representations or the idea...