THE WOMEN FROM ALAPSUR IN GÖRAN TUNSTRÖM’S TRAVEL MEMOIR: THE DYNAMICS OF A REVERSED ALTERITY TECHNIQUE

Abstract

Part of a larger project interrogating the strategies of different 20th century Scandinavian writers of reaching themselves by exploring anthropologic and geographic alterity during their travels, my article looks into the way that Göran Tunström’s Indian explorations, evoked in his travelogue “India – a winter journey”2, function as a catalyst of his personal destiny, reverberating in a singular form of artistic assumption. His inspiring explorations, at the same time geographical and interior, can even invite a phenomenological approach to alterity awareness, in which the portrait of the women from Alapsur plays an interesting role in reversing the functions of exotism and otherness.