The Transpacific Travel from India to Canada in <i>Life of Pi</i> by Yann Martel and Its Link to Transculturality and Transdisciplinarity

Authors

  • Patrick Imbert University of Ottawa

Abstract

Patrick Imbert
Univeristy of Ottawa
Canada

The goal is to see how the transpacific travel of the immigrant Piscine from India to Canada in the best seller and Booker Prize novel Life of Pi allows us to revisit the dynamic of exclusion, and the idea of nation and place as well as to recognize alterity in perspectives emphasizing more transculturalism than multiculturalism. This anthropo-thematic analysis will lead us to a theoretical perspective based upon the comparison between trans-multi-interdisciplinary and trans-multi-intercultural perspectives and to establish links between the trans, the multi and the inter in the context of the legitimacy of symbolic and geographic displacements and of multiple encounters as they are linked to the Americas.

Author Biography

Patrick Imbert, University of Ottawa

Patrick Imbert studied semiotics and literature at the University of Ottawa, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1974. He started his academic career in 1974 as an assistant professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. In 1975, he taught at the University of Ottawa where he became a Full Professor in 1984. He was professor of the year of the Faculty of Arts 1998, and has a University Research Chair entitled: ‘Canada: Social and Cultural Challenges in a Knowledge-Based Society’. He was Executive Director of the International American Studies Association (2005–2009), and became the President of the Academy of Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009 (2009–2011). He is co-founder and vice-president of the City for the Cultures of Peace. He is also director of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded project (2010–2013) entitled ‘Établir des paradigmes opératoires pour comparer les variations discursives dans les Amériques menant des identités enacinées, de leur inclusion ou exclusion, aux identités ransculturelles dans le contexte de la glocalisation’.

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Wor(l)ds Apart: Navigating Differences—RIAS Vol. 7, Fall–Winter (2/2014)

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Published

2014-11-15

How to Cite

Imbert, P. (2014). The Transpacific Travel from India to Canada in <i>Life of Pi</i> by Yann Martel and Its Link to Transculturality and Transdisciplinarity. Review of International American Studies, 7(2). Retrieved from https://trrest.vot.pl/ojsus/index.php/RIAS/article/view/4031

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 2 (2014): Wor(l)ds Apart: Navigating Differences—RIAS Vol. 7, Fall–Winter (2/2014)

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