Approaching postcolonial theory through cultural analysis, this book offers an accessible and concrete appraisal of current developments in postcolonial criticism. Detailed readings of a range of Anglophone Caribbean migrant women's texts from the late 1980s and 1990s lead to sharp insights into three issues that are crucial to an understanding of the field: place, voice, and silence. The discussion of these issues allows us to trace current feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial debates about the nature of the speaking subject, as it is emerging from today's postcolonial cultural practices. Postcolonial criticism often understands this subject as hybrid and multiple. This book shows how the specifics of this multiplicity must be acknowledged through analysis of the power structures and the violence through which this multiple subject is established. The book is also a consistent inquiry into reading positions. The argument about the differences between postcolonialist, black and Caribbean feminist, white feminist, and postmodern criticism is conducted as a discussion about the effects, insights, and blindnesses produced by these different ways of reading Caribbean migrant women's writing. Scrutinizing the grain of these texts encourages us to move beyond the kind of general statements for which postcolonial theory has been severely criticized. The author also extends her critique of reading positions to issues of methodology, using these approaches to direct her interpretation. Narratology is supplemented by an analysis of the interdiscursive processes through which texts are created, and psychoanalytic concepts are used to explore the ambiguous merits of postcolonial reading. Above all, In Praise of New Travelers celebrates the vigorous, subversive, and liberating creativity of an accomplished generation of Caribbean migrant women writers.
Why do we find so many references to nature and the environment in the many Caribbean literary texts that try to come to terms with the contemporary age of globalization? Even when these novels and poems do not seem to be concerned with environmental issues at all, they abound with fragrant, creepy or dark references to flowers, insects, trees, gardens, and mud. This book discusses a range of Anglophone and Dutch-language Caribbean literary texts to propose an answer. It shows that some writers evoke nature to question oppressive notions of what is natural, and what is not, when it comes to race, gender, and desire. Other writers choose to counter the destructive dichotomies of wildness/order, nature/culture, nature/human that marked colonialism. Instead, they represent the environment as a field of interconnectedness, marked by intense semiotic interaction, in which human beings are also implicated. But writing about nature can also be a means to reconnect with the very foundations of life itself. In the most dramatic cases, references to nature evoke an extra-discursive space that then functions to subvert existing discourses. That space may even mark the site of the annihilation of discourse, or of the self. These texts suggest that, in times of globalization, it is only the dark, queer turn to matter that will free the path to imagining human existence in a new way. The book’s proposal to understand some of these fascinating texts as an effort to relate to the mind-baffling, explosive real is inspired by postcolonial trauma theory, posthumanism, and new materialism. However, Caribbean literature is a layered practice, that does much more than merely explore the world’s materiality. It works simultaneously as cultural critique, counter-discourse, and as the manipulation of affect. This book therefore brings together ecocriticism with Caribbean and postcolonial studies, the study of globalization, trauma theory, the study of gender and sexuality, posthumanism and new materialism, to bring out the full complexity of these wise texts. Thus, it hopes to show its readers their extraordinary innovative potential.
This bi-lingual volume of twelve English and eight French papers proposes to breach linguistic critical frontiers by placing analysis of texts from different language traditions in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural dialogue. The focus of analysis rests on the multiple and complex global convergences and interferences of cultural influences.
Having been hired by a mysterious corporation called Gippart, twelve-year-old Josh--along with two friends and the ghost of his dead twin sister--finds himself trapped in "umaya," a place between dreams, time, and reality.
Approaching postcolonial theory through cultural analysis, this book offers an accessible and concrete appraisal of current developments in postcolonial criticism. Detailed readings of a range of Anglophone Caribbean migrant women's texts from the late 1980s and 1990s lead to sharp insights into three issues that are crucial to an understanding of the field: place, voice, and silence. The discussion of these issues allows us to trace current feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial debates about the nature of the speaking subject, as it is emerging from today's postcolonial cultural practices. Postcolonial criticism often understands this subject as hybrid and multiple. This book shows how the specifics of this multiplicity must be acknowledged through analysis of the power structures and the violence through which this multiple subject is established. The book is also a consistent inquiry into reading positions. The argument about the differences between postcolonialist, black and Caribbean feminist, white feminist, and postmodern criticism is conducted as a discussion about the effects, insights, and blindnesses produced by these different ways of reading Caribbean migrant women's writing. Scrutinizing the grain of these texts encourages us to move beyond the kind of general statements for which postcolonial theory has been severely criticized. The author also extends her critique of reading positions to issues of methodology, using these approaches to direct her interpretation. Narratology is supplemented by an analysis of the interdiscursive processes through which texts are created, and psychoanalytic concepts are used to explore the ambiguous merits of postcolonial reading. Above all, In Praise of New Travelers celebrates the vigorous, subversive, and liberating creativity of an accomplished generation of Caribbean migrant women writers.
Why do we find so many references to nature and the environment in the many Caribbean literary texts that try to come to terms with the contemporary age of globalization? Even when these novels and poems do not seem to be concerned with environmental issues at all, they abound with fragrant, creepy or dark references to flowers, insects, trees, gardens, and mud. This book discusses a range of Anglophone and Dutch-language Caribbean literary texts to propose an answer. It shows that some writers evoke nature to question oppressive notions of what is natural, and what is not, when it comes to race, gender, and desire. Other writers choose to counter the destructive dichotomies of wildness/order, nature/culture, nature/human that marked colonialism. Instead, they represent the environment as a field of interconnectedness, marked by intense semiotic interaction, in which human beings are also implicated. But writing about nature can also be a means to reconnect with the very foundations of life itself. In the most dramatic cases, references to nature evoke an extra-discursive space that then functions to subvert existing discourses. That space may even mark the site of the annihilation of discourse, or of the self. These texts suggest that, in times of globalization, it is only the dark, queer turn to matter that will free the path to imagining human existence in a new way. The book’s proposal to understand some of these fascinating texts as an effort to relate to the mind-baffling, explosive real is inspired by postcolonial trauma theory, posthumanism, and new materialism. However, Caribbean literature is a layered practice, that does much more than merely explore the world’s materiality. It works simultaneously as cultural critique, counter-discourse, and as the manipulation of affect. This book therefore brings together ecocriticism with Caribbean and postcolonial studies, the study of globalization, trauma theory, the study of gender and sexuality, posthumanism and new materialism, to bring out the full complexity of these wise texts. Thus, it hopes to show its readers their extraordinary innovative potential.
Approaching postcolonial theory through cultural analysis, this book offers an accessible and concrete appraisal of current developments in postcolonial criticism. Detailed readings of a range of Anglophone Caribbean migrant women's texts from the late 1980s and 1990s lead to sharp insights into three issues that are crucial to an understanding of the field: place, voice, and silence. The discussion of these issues allows us to trace current feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial debates about the nature of the speaking subject, as it is emerging from today's postcolonial cultural practices. Postcolonial criticism often understands this subject as hybrid and multiple. This book shows how the specifics of this multiplicity must be acknowledged through analysis of the power structures and the violence through which this multiple subject is established. The book is also a consistent inquiry into reading positions. The argument about the differences between postcolonialist, black and Caribbean feminist, white feminist, and postmodern criticism is conducted as a discussion about the effects, insights, and blindnesses produced by these different ways of reading Caribbean migrant women's writing. Scrutinizing the grain of these texts encourages us to move beyond the kind of general statements for which postcolonial theory has been severely criticized. The author also extends her critique of reading positions to issues of methodology, using these approaches to direct her interpretation. Narratology is supplemented by an analysis of the interdiscursive processes through which texts are created, and psychoanalytic concepts are used to explore the ambiguous merits of postcolonial reading. Above all, In Praise of New Travelers celebrates the vigorous, subversive, and liberating creativity of an accomplished generation of Caribbean migrant women writers.
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.
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