Name: Temoor Mukaty
Instructor: Platt
Date: 10/07/2013
Tim Winton’s ‘The Turning’: Critical Analysis Tim Winton, in –The Turning– as a sequence of narratives, portrays various characters from different backgrounds, interacting in social contexts uniquely different from one another. These characters portray a sense of struggle, with respect to espousing the existent mysterious bonds that often draw them together, strive to enhance social cohesion while at the same time are torn apart by deep-rooted differences. Vilém Flusser, on the other hand, through his great contributions to philosophy, journalism and writing, such as – The Challenge of the Migrant – extended his influence onto the fields of “phenomenology and existentialism”(Wikipedia). He discusses the role of immigrants and how their lives are impacted and shaped when they arrive in a foreign land. An immigrant is met with hostility and discrimination, however Flusser declares that the immigrant is the “vanguard of the future” (Flusser 15). By and large, he epitomizes historical migration as a great blessing in disguise due to his perspective that this section of society enables humanity interact by way of revealing bonds binding us. With reference to the above, Flusser provides varying contextual explanations of the need for both personal and group responsibility, encompassing good neighborliness, entrepreneurship and the strive towards co-existing in harmony. There is a sense of bonding, with each person’s ‘Heimat’, in reference to individuals separated from their usual familiar backgrounds. This bond as such, binds everyone to his/her childhood and birth, as well as such aspects as language, acquired affinity and early childhood experiences. To expound further, he focuses on communication and artistic production that have been influenced by the “phenomenology” of migration due to human civilization’s dynamic nature. With reference to migration and its effects, he provides a variety of ideals that are viable to the nature of national identity/ nationalism (Vilém 2). As such, this idea of the heimat taking equivalence to the home and consequently making national boundaries become more permeable and arbitrary in nature; there is a sense of misdirection and misunderstanding with respect to the individual and group identity. In exemplifying globalization, he shows how the effect how current global contexts are indeed defying the traditional textual and linear “epistemologies”(Wikipedia) of the past. This is through modern societies being in a flux, with international circulatory networks, as well as the aspect of visual simulation growth, providing various explicit challenges. Beyond this, his ideals on individual and group identity, in addition to the aspect of communication, are as such, essentially rooted in the idea of discovering one’s self. With regards to migration, the complex manner in which it affects entire populations, not only the immigrants but also the host nation itself, fundamentally impacts the existing social order and interaction (Vilém 4). By addressing this issue, he provides examples of both the potential possibilities to be gained and the necessary pains to be endured. While migrants are as such not responsible for their eventual state of affairs, ending up enmeshed in existent social contexts, they are, unfortunately, often the recipients of prejudice from host nations/ populations, suffering double-fold. First is the persecution from their mother/homeland and then the new reality of discrimination and suffering in foreign lands. However, immigration provides a crucial opportunity towards understanding other social contexts and dimensions, often providing “windows of knowledge” for native populations, which existentially host these new immigrant populations (Vilém 7). Tim Winton, in the story – The Turning – provides a vivid description of existing social contexts influencing, affecting and in turn being affected by the process
