(Un)writing Empire

Erscheinungsjahr 1998
ISBN: 978-90-420-0461-0
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 30, 321 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 562 g

Reihe: Cross/Cultures

The contributors to the present volume, in espousing and extending the programme of such writers as Edward Said, Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, lay bare the genealogy of 'writing' empire (thereby, in a sense, 'un-writing' it). One focus is the Caribbean: the retrograde agenda of francophone créolité; the re-writing of empire in the postmodern disengagement of Edouard Glissant; resistance to post-colonial allegiances, and the dissolving of binary categories, in contemporary West Indian writing. Essays on India, Malaysia, and Indonesia explore various aspects of cultural self-understanding in Asia: un-writing high culture through hybrid 'shopping' among Western styles; the use of indigenous oral forms to counter Western hegemony; romantic and anti-romantic attitudes towards empire and the land. A shift to Africa brings a study of Nadine Gordimer's feminist un-writing of Hemingway's masculinist colonising narrative, a searching analysis of Soyinka's restoration of ancient syncretic elements in his West African re-visions of Greek tragedy, changing evaluations of the validity of European civilization in André Gide's representations of Africa, and tensions of linguistic allegiance in Maghreb literature. North America, finally, is brought back into the imperial fold through discussions of Melville's re-writing of travel and captivity narratives to critique the mission of American empire, Leslie Marmon Silko's re-territorialization of expropriated Native American oral traditions, and Timothy Findley's representation of Canada's troubled involvement with its three shaping empires (French, British, American).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

D'haen, Theo

Inhaltsverzeichnis

INTRODUCTION. Theo D'HAEN: (Un)Writing Empire. Robert YOUNG: The Overwritten Unwritten: Nationalism and its Doubles in Post-Colonial Theory. THE CARIBBEAN. A. James ARNOLD: Créolité: Cultural Nation-Building or Cultural Dependence? Chris BONGIE: (Un)ending Colonialism: Post-Colonial Identities and Postmodern Ambivalence in Edouard Glissant's Mahagony. John THIEME: Pre-Text and Con-Text: Re-writing the Caribbean. Aleid FOKKEMA: On the (False) Idea of Exile: Derek Walcott and Grace Nichols. ASIA. Rachel DWYER: 'Starry Nights: The Novels of Shobha Dé. Muhammad HAJI SALLEH: Unwriting with the Voice: Orality as a Post-Colonial Literary Apparatus in Malaysian Literature. Peter van ZONNEVELD: H.J. Friedericy and the Indonesian Voice. Christine LEVECQ: (De)Romanticizing the Land: Culture and Cultivation in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature of the Dutch East Indies. AFRICA. Kenneth W. HARROW: Gordimer contre Hemingway: Crossing Back through the Mirror that Subtends All Speculation. Chantal ZABUS: The Yoruba Bacchae: Wole Soyinka's Dearyanization of Greek Civilization. Ieme van der POEL: Gide's Africa/Africa's Gide. Abdellah BOUNFOUR: Language, Identity, and Writing in Francophone Maghreb Literature. AMERICA. Johann C. KARDUX: Herman Melville and the Mission of American Empire. John PEACOCK: Unwriting Empire by Writing Oral Tradition: Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. Theo D'HAEN: Timothy Findley's Headhunter, Empire, and Canadian Modernity.