The constitutive interculturality of the Vonnegutian fictional world
Keywords:
Vonnegut, interculturality, experience, German, AmericanAbstract
We propose to study the textual marks of interculturality in the literary work of Kurt Vonnegut and reflect on them following the general perspective presented by Sanz Cabrerizo (ed.) (2008). A series of early experiences in the life of this writer mark the loss of innocence in relation to certain closed social and cultural identities, shapers of worldviews. These experiences of rupture of known orders, of crossing the borders of the infantile and juvenile family, will find a space to be revisited, thought and elaborated in the literary narrative and, then, in the intense oratory activity of Vonnegut as well as in the incursion into the cultural journalistic writing. The reflection generated by the narrative, rhetoric and aesthetic elaboration will be fruitful, in four aspects: 1) a strong criticism of the American culture; 2) an appreciation of the German culture inherited from his family, together with a careful questioning of the demonization of the German, fueled by Nazism; 3) an insistence on social inequality as transversal to other types of inequities (ethnic, gender, national); and 4) a militant and pacifist humanism that advocates compassion, harmony and the sacredness of human dignity beyond all differences.
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