13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

BLACHE, Marthe

Cultural Identity Along the Border

This paper deals with the memorates of Argentineans living in a North-eastern border town and their own constructions about their Brazilian neighbours on the other side of the frontier. Taking into account that border regions are sensitive areas where two cultures or two political systems come face to face, Argentineans construct Brazilians´ idiosyncratic characteristics showing, at the same time, their own prejudices, fears and identity features.

The intratextual and intertextual analysis applied to these personal experience narratives allow to show, from a folkloric point of view, the role played by tradition and by local, regional, national and foreign contexts. Therefore, I attempt to disclose how community members re-elaborate and interpret their own reality based on the way they construct and symbolize their previous established relationships with members of their own community, their province, their nation and their frontier neighbours.