The Open Spaces of Literature vs. the Closed Spaces of Nation: the (Trans)national (Con)text of Contemporary American and Bosnian-Herzegovinian Literature(s)

In their individual categories and entities, both American and Bosnian and Herzegovinian literatures are more transnational in the 21st century than ever before in the history of the literature of both countries, or even in the history of world literature. The transnationality of both has been manifested in many ways through the history of the world as seen as an open space for mobility in both literatures, being in many respects opposed to the closed spaces of the “imagined communities” of the nation-states these literatures “belong to” in the national context. In addition, transnational American and Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature has been created on both sides as a joined and mutual, permuting and open space/category in both literatures. Hence, there are individual systems and spaces of Transnational American Literature(s) and Transnational Bosnian and Herzegovinian Literature(s), and there is a mutual category and a joined entity of Transnational American and Bosnian and Herzegovinian Literature(s) as part of the generic system of both trans/national works of literature. The special aim of the article is to contribute to the field of the study of Contemporary Transnational American, Bosnian-Herzegovinian, and American-Bosnian-Herzegovinian works of literature, emphasizing how the identities of authors and/or their books and then their modes of mobility, can defamiliarize and resist conventions and canon of “imagined communities”. In that context, the article also aims to benefit contemporary trans/national literary and cultural studies in their specificity and uniqueness in the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Broader the world, examining the processes through which American and Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature become members of the “World Republic of Letters” and how this process is experienced and vice versa