Immigration, Popular Culture, and the Re-routing of European Muslim Identity

Through readings of postcolonial theory and examination of post-9/11 novels, film, and hip-hop music, this book studies how North African immigrants to Spain translate and transfer cultural and political memory from one land to another. This book examines contemporary North African immigration to Spain through the critical analysis of novels, film, and hip-hop produced by and about immigrants. By studying the remapping of Europe as a topography of immigration, and by investigating the ways in which cultural productions have been translating and mediating old Mediterranean identities and revitalizing the trope of Al-Andalus, this study examines the creation of new 'European', 'Moorish', and & 'European Islamic' identities in Spain and Europe at large. Central to this study is the concept of traslado, used here to trace both the translation and transfer of cultural memory and national identity through a focus on immigrants who have been moving between and transcending national spaces. In tracing the re-routing of 'Moorishness, ' this study integrates many areas of postcolonial, gender, and border studies, ultimately proposing a wider cross-reading of texts that reflects today's increasingly transnational immigrant subjectivities Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-16 Memory, Return, and the “Other Side”....Pages 17-50 Romancing Europe....Pages 51-99 Europe via Spain....Pages 101-148 Conclusion....Pages 149-160 Back Matter....Pages 161-189