Resumen de Space, Identity, and Ocean Crossings in Uribe's Bilbao-New York-Bilbao

David Colbert Goicoa

• This article analyzes the implications of Kirmen Uribe’s Bilbao-New York-Bilbao’s use of transoceanic structuring and maritime imagery to explore Basque identity. Through ocean motifs, the novel addresses questions central to minority national identity in a period of accelerated globalization and declining national sovereignty: how peripheral territories can relate to other parts of the world without resorting to defensive nationalism and without suffering or exacerbat-ing homogenization and new forms of inequality. This essay argues that Uribe’s ocean reconciles openness and movement with stability and retention of differ-ence, opposite tendencies that are explored also in the book’s meditations on the identity-generating discourses of memory and narrative literature.