Jane Hiddleston and Khalid Lyamlahy (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789622331
- eISBN:
- 9781800341272
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789622331.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Abdelkébir Khatibi (1938–2009) is one of the greatest Moroccan thinkers, and one of the most important theorists of both postcolonialism and Islamic culture of the late twentieth and early ...
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Abdelkébir Khatibi (1938–2009) is one of the greatest Moroccan thinkers, and one of the most important theorists of both postcolonialism and Islamic culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book introduces his works to Anglophone readers, tracing his development from the early work on sociology in Morocco to his literary and aesthetic works championing transnationalism and multilingualism. The essays here both offer close analyses of Khatibi’s engagements with a range of issues, from Moroccan politics to Arabic calligraphy and from decolonisation to interculturality, and highlights the important contribution of his thinking to the development of Western postcolonial and modern theory. The book acknowledges the legacy of one of the greatest African thinkers of the last century, and addresses the lack of attention to his work in the field of postcolonial studies. More than a writer, a sociologist or a thinker, Khatibi was a leading figure and an eclectic intellectual whose erudite works can still inform and enrich current reflections on the future of postcolonialism and the development of intercultural and transnational studies. The book also includes translated excerpts from Khatibi’s works, thus offering a multilingual perspective on his writing.Less
Abdelkébir Khatibi (1938–2009) is one of the greatest Moroccan thinkers, and one of the most important theorists of both postcolonialism and Islamic culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book introduces his works to Anglophone readers, tracing his development from the early work on sociology in Morocco to his literary and aesthetic works championing transnationalism and multilingualism. The essays here both offer close analyses of Khatibi’s engagements with a range of issues, from Moroccan politics to Arabic calligraphy and from decolonisation to interculturality, and highlights the important contribution of his thinking to the development of Western postcolonial and modern theory. The book acknowledges the legacy of one of the greatest African thinkers of the last century, and addresses the lack of attention to his work in the field of postcolonial studies. More than a writer, a sociologist or a thinker, Khatibi was a leading figure and an eclectic intellectual whose erudite works can still inform and enrich current reflections on the future of postcolonialism and the development of intercultural and transnational studies. The book also includes translated excerpts from Khatibi’s works, thus offering a multilingual perspective on his writing.
Martin Munro and Celia Britton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846317538
- eISBN:
- 9781846317200
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317200
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The Francophone Caribbean and the American South are sites born of the plantation, the common matrix for the diverse nations and territories of the circum-Caribbean. This book takes as its premise ...
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The Francophone Caribbean and the American South are sites born of the plantation, the common matrix for the diverse nations and territories of the circum-Caribbean. This book takes as its premise that the basic configuration of the plantation, in terms of its physical layout and the social relations it created, was largely the same in the Caribbean and the American South. Chapters written by leading authorities in the field examine the cultural, social, and historical affinities between the Francophone Caribbean and the American South, including Louisiana, which among the Southern states has had a quite particular attachment to France and the Francophone world. The chapters focus on issues of history, language, politics and culture in various forms, notably literature, music and theatre. The chapters explore in innovative ways the notions of creole culture and creolization, terms rooted in and indicative of contact between European and African people and cultures in the Americas, and which are promoted here as some of the most productive ways for conceiving of the circum-Caribbean as a cultural and historical entity.Less
The Francophone Caribbean and the American South are sites born of the plantation, the common matrix for the diverse nations and territories of the circum-Caribbean. This book takes as its premise that the basic configuration of the plantation, in terms of its physical layout and the social relations it created, was largely the same in the Caribbean and the American South. Chapters written by leading authorities in the field examine the cultural, social, and historical affinities between the Francophone Caribbean and the American South, including Louisiana, which among the Southern states has had a quite particular attachment to France and the Francophone world. The chapters focus on issues of history, language, politics and culture in various forms, notably literature, music and theatre. The chapters explore in innovative ways the notions of creole culture and creolization, terms rooted in and indicative of contact between European and African people and cultures in the Americas, and which are promoted here as some of the most productive ways for conceiving of the circum-Caribbean as a cultural and historical entity.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, ...
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Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, departmentalization, dictatorship, overseas collectivity and occupation. Given the strictures and structures of colonialism long imposed upon the colonized subject, the (re)makings of identity have proven anything but evident when it comes to determining authentic expressions and perceptions of the postcolonial self. By way of close readings of both constructions in literature and the construction of literature, Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean proposes an original, informative frame of reference for understanding the long and ever-evolving struggle for social, cultural, historical and political autonomy in the region. Taking as its point of focus diverse canonical and lesser-known texts from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti published between 1958 and 2013, this book examines the trope of the house (architecture) and the meta-textual construction of texts (architexture) as a means of conceptualizing and articulating how authentic means of expression are and have been created in French-Caribbean literature over the greater part of the past half-century—whether it be in the context of the years leading up to or following the departmentalization of France’s overseas colonies in the 1940’s, the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, or the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010.Less
Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, departmentalization, dictatorship, overseas collectivity and occupation. Given the strictures and structures of colonialism long imposed upon the colonized subject, the (re)makings of identity have proven anything but evident when it comes to determining authentic expressions and perceptions of the postcolonial self. By way of close readings of both constructions in literature and the construction of literature, Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean proposes an original, informative frame of reference for understanding the long and ever-evolving struggle for social, cultural, historical and political autonomy in the region. Taking as its point of focus diverse canonical and lesser-known texts from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti published between 1958 and 2013, this book examines the trope of the house (architecture) and the meta-textual construction of texts (architexture) as a means of conceptualizing and articulating how authentic means of expression are and have been created in French-Caribbean literature over the greater part of the past half-century—whether it be in the context of the years leading up to or following the departmentalization of France’s overseas colonies in the 1940’s, the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, or the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010.
Jane Hiddleston
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846310317
- eISBN:
- 9781786945341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846310317.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria is a book about expatriation, and the constant, necessary revisiting that follows. In the book, Hiddleston seeks to conceptualise Djebar’s progressive struggle and ...
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Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria is a book about expatriation, and the constant, necessary revisiting that follows. In the book, Hiddleston seeks to conceptualise Djebar’s progressive struggle and dissatisfaction with the notion of Algerian identity by referring to a number of contemporary theoretical concepts. Hiddleston’s analysis of the Djebar’s gradual and partial ‘expatriation’ is shaped heavily by the writer’s participation in crossroads between French philosophy, multiple Algerian traditions, and Anglo-American postcolonial theory. The study also situates Djebar’s thinking in recent French philosophy, making connections between her understanding of subjectivity and individuation and those produced by contemporary thinkers working in France.Less
Assia Djebar: Out of Algeria is a book about expatriation, and the constant, necessary revisiting that follows. In the book, Hiddleston seeks to conceptualise Djebar’s progressive struggle and dissatisfaction with the notion of Algerian identity by referring to a number of contemporary theoretical concepts. Hiddleston’s analysis of the Djebar’s gradual and partial ‘expatriation’ is shaped heavily by the writer’s participation in crossroads between French philosophy, multiple Algerian traditions, and Anglo-American postcolonial theory. The study also situates Djebar’s thinking in recent French philosophy, making connections between her understanding of subjectivity and individuation and those produced by contemporary thinkers working in France.
Nicola Frith and Kate Hodgson (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381595
- eISBN:
- 9781781382240
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381595.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Recent years have seen a growing body of literature dedicated to memories of slavery in the Anglophone world, yet little has been done to approach this subject from Francophone perspectives. This ...
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Recent years have seen a growing body of literature dedicated to memories of slavery in the Anglophone world, yet little has been done to approach this subject from Francophone perspectives. This collection responds to the urgent need to contribute to current research on slavery and memory studies by focusing specifically on the Francophone world. Featuring the scholarship of leading academics in France, Britain, the United States and Canada, the collection reflects upon contemporary commemorative practices that relate to the history of slavery and the slave trade, and questions how they function in relationship to other, less memorialized histories of exploitation, such as indentured and forced labour. The volume is set against the context of France’s growing body of memory legislation, as well as its close cultural and political connections to its former empire, all of which make it an influential player in how slavery continues to be memorialized and conceptualized in the public sphere. Contributors retrace and redraw the narrative map of slavery and its legacies in the Francophone world through a comparative understanding of how these different, but interconnected forms of labour exploitation have been remembered and/or forgotten from European, West African, Indian Ocean and Caribbean perspectives.Less
Recent years have seen a growing body of literature dedicated to memories of slavery in the Anglophone world, yet little has been done to approach this subject from Francophone perspectives. This collection responds to the urgent need to contribute to current research on slavery and memory studies by focusing specifically on the Francophone world. Featuring the scholarship of leading academics in France, Britain, the United States and Canada, the collection reflects upon contemporary commemorative practices that relate to the history of slavery and the slave trade, and questions how they function in relationship to other, less memorialized histories of exploitation, such as indentured and forced labour. The volume is set against the context of France’s growing body of memory legislation, as well as its close cultural and political connections to its former empire, all of which make it an influential player in how slavery continues to be memorialized and conceptualized in the public sphere. Contributors retrace and redraw the narrative map of slavery and its legacies in the Francophone world through a comparative understanding of how these different, but interconnected forms of labour exploitation have been remembered and/or forgotten from European, West African, Indian Ocean and Caribbean perspectives.
Debra Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853236597
- eISBN:
- 9781846312625
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846312625
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa — Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Albert Memmi — as they ...
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This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa — Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Albert Memmi — as they explore issues of language, identity and the individual's relationship to history. The book places these writers in a clearly defined theoretical context, introducing and contextualising each of the four through the application of postcolonial studies and literary theory on autobiography linked to close textual reading of their works. Avoiding both psychoanalytical theory and approaches concerned primarily with the writer's ‘testimony value’, the book concentrates instead on the poetic and literary qualities of each author's work, dwelling on the politics and poetics of identity, as well as the ethics and aesthetics of this literature. It includes clear discussions of key terms such as ‘postcolonial’, ‘Francophone’ and ‘autobiography’, which current academic discourse has rendered very complex and even opaque. The book includes a fascinating photograph of two stone tablets inscribed with Punic and Numidian scripts.Less
This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa — Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Albert Memmi — as they explore issues of language, identity and the individual's relationship to history. The book places these writers in a clearly defined theoretical context, introducing and contextualising each of the four through the application of postcolonial studies and literary theory on autobiography linked to close textual reading of their works. Avoiding both psychoanalytical theory and approaches concerned primarily with the writer's ‘testimony value’, the book concentrates instead on the poetic and literary qualities of each author's work, dwelling on the politics and poetics of identity, as well as the ethics and aesthetics of this literature. It includes clear discussions of key terms such as ‘postcolonial’, ‘Francophone’ and ‘autobiography’, which current academic discourse has rendered very complex and even opaque. The book includes a fascinating photograph of two stone tablets inscribed with Punic and Numidian scripts.
Raphael Dalleo (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781382967
- eISBN:
- 9781781384084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382967.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Postcolonial studies has taken a significant turn since 2000 from the post-structural focus on language and identity of the 1980s and 1990s to more materialist and sociological approaches. A key ...
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Postcolonial studies has taken a significant turn since 2000 from the post-structural focus on language and identity of the 1980s and 1990s to more materialist and sociological approaches. A key theorist in inspiring this innovative new scholarship has been Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu and Postcolonial Studies shows the emergence of this strand of postcolonialism through collecting texts that pioneered this approach—by Graham Huggan, Chris Bongie, and Sarah Brouillette—as well as emerging scholarship that follows the path these critics have established. This Bourdieu-inspired work examines the institutions that structure the creation, dissemination, and reception of world literature; the foundational values of the field and its sometimes ambivalent relationship to the popular; and the ways concepts like habitus, cultural capital, consecration and anamnesis can be deployed in reading postcolonial texts. Topics include explorations of the institutions of the field such as the B.B.C.’s Caribbean voices program and the South African publishing industry; analysis of Bourdieu’s fieldwork in Algeria during the decolonization era; and comparisons between Bourdieu’s work and alternative versions of literary sociology such as Pascale Casanova’s and Franco Moretti’s. The sociological approach to literature developed in the collected essays shows how, even if the commodification of postcolonialism threatens to neutralize the field’s potential for resistance and opposition, a renewed project of postcolonial critique can be built in the contaminated spaces of globalization.Less
Postcolonial studies has taken a significant turn since 2000 from the post-structural focus on language and identity of the 1980s and 1990s to more materialist and sociological approaches. A key theorist in inspiring this innovative new scholarship has been Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu and Postcolonial Studies shows the emergence of this strand of postcolonialism through collecting texts that pioneered this approach—by Graham Huggan, Chris Bongie, and Sarah Brouillette—as well as emerging scholarship that follows the path these critics have established. This Bourdieu-inspired work examines the institutions that structure the creation, dissemination, and reception of world literature; the foundational values of the field and its sometimes ambivalent relationship to the popular; and the ways concepts like habitus, cultural capital, consecration and anamnesis can be deployed in reading postcolonial texts. Topics include explorations of the institutions of the field such as the B.B.C.’s Caribbean voices program and the South African publishing industry; analysis of Bourdieu’s fieldwork in Algeria during the decolonization era; and comparisons between Bourdieu’s work and alternative versions of literary sociology such as Pascale Casanova’s and Franco Moretti’s. The sociological approach to literature developed in the collected essays shows how, even if the commodification of postcolonialism threatens to neutralize the field’s potential for resistance and opposition, a renewed project of postcolonial critique can be built in the contaminated spaces of globalization.
Kathryn A. Kleppinger
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381960
- eISBN:
- 9781786945204
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381960.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Branding the Beur Author analyzes mainstream media promotion of literature written by the descendants of North African immigrants to France (often called beurs). Launched in the early 1980s, ...
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Branding the Beur Author analyzes mainstream media promotion of literature written by the descendants of North African immigrants to France (often called beurs). Launched in the early 1980s, conversations between journalists and ‘beur’ authors delve into contemporary debates such as racism in the 1980s and Islam in French society in the 1990s. But the interests of journalists looking for sensational subject matter also heavily shape the promotion and reception of these novels: only the ‘beur’ authors who use a realist style to write about the challenges faced by the North African immigrant population in France—and who engage on-air with French identity politics and immigration—receive multiple invitations to participate in interviews. Previous scholarship has taken a necessary first step by analyzing the social and political stakes of this literature (using labels such as ‘beur’ and/or ‘banlieue,’ to designate its urban, economically distressed setting), but this book argues that this approach reproduces the selection criteria deployed by the media that determine which texts receive commercial and critical support. By demonstrating how minority-based literary labels such as ‘francophone’ and ‘postcolonial’ are always already defined by the socio-political context in which such works are published and promoted, this book establishes that these labels are tautological and cannot reflect the thematic and stylistic richness of beur (and other minority) production in France.Less
Branding the Beur Author analyzes mainstream media promotion of literature written by the descendants of North African immigrants to France (often called beurs). Launched in the early 1980s, conversations between journalists and ‘beur’ authors delve into contemporary debates such as racism in the 1980s and Islam in French society in the 1990s. But the interests of journalists looking for sensational subject matter also heavily shape the promotion and reception of these novels: only the ‘beur’ authors who use a realist style to write about the challenges faced by the North African immigrant population in France—and who engage on-air with French identity politics and immigration—receive multiple invitations to participate in interviews. Previous scholarship has taken a necessary first step by analyzing the social and political stakes of this literature (using labels such as ‘beur’ and/or ‘banlieue,’ to designate its urban, economically distressed setting), but this book argues that this approach reproduces the selection criteria deployed by the media that determine which texts receive commercial and critical support. By demonstrating how minority-based literary labels such as ‘francophone’ and ‘postcolonial’ are always already defined by the socio-political context in which such works are published and promoted, this book establishes that these labels are tautological and cannot reflect the thematic and stylistic richness of beur (and other minority) production in France.
Louise Hardwick
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318412
- eISBN:
- 9781781380475
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318412.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book examines a major modern turn in Francophone Caribbean literature towards the récit d'enfance, or childhood memoir, and asks why this occurred post-1990, connecting texts to recent changes ...
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This book examines a major modern turn in Francophone Caribbean literature towards the récit d'enfance, or childhood memoir, and asks why this occurred post-1990, connecting texts to recent changes in public policy and education policy concerning the commemoration of slavery and colonialism both in France and at a global level (for example, the UNESCO project 'La Route de l'esclave', the 'loi Taubira' and the 'Comité pour la mémoire de l'esclavage'). Combining approaches from Postcolonial Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Gender Studies, and positing recognition as a central concept of postcolonial literature, it draws attention to a neglected body of récits d'enfance by contemporary bestselling, prize-winning Francophone Caribbean authors Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Daniel Maximin, Raphaël Confiant and Dany Laferrière, while also offering new readings of texts by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Joseph Zobel, Françoise Ega, Michèle Lacrosil, Maurice Virassamy and Mayotte Capécia. The study proposes an innovative methodological paradigm with which to read postcolonial childhoods in a comparative framework from areas as diverse as the Caribbean, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly the Haitian diaspora in North America. Less
This book examines a major modern turn in Francophone Caribbean literature towards the récit d'enfance, or childhood memoir, and asks why this occurred post-1990, connecting texts to recent changes in public policy and education policy concerning the commemoration of slavery and colonialism both in France and at a global level (for example, the UNESCO project 'La Route de l'esclave', the 'loi Taubira' and the 'Comité pour la mémoire de l'esclavage'). Combining approaches from Postcolonial Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Gender Studies, and positing recognition as a central concept of postcolonial literature, it draws attention to a neglected body of récits d'enfance by contemporary bestselling, prize-winning Francophone Caribbean authors Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Daniel Maximin, Raphaël Confiant and Dany Laferrière, while also offering new readings of texts by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Joseph Zobel, Françoise Ega, Michèle Lacrosil, Maurice Virassamy and Mayotte Capécia. The study proposes an innovative methodological paradigm with which to read postcolonial childhoods in a comparative framework from areas as diverse as the Caribbean, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly the Haitian diaspora in North America.
Lesley Wylie
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319747
- eISBN:
- 9781781380932
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319747.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Coming to prominence during the tropical booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the Rubber Boom, the Putumayo has long been a site of mass immigration and exile, of ...
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Coming to prominence during the tropical booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the Rubber Boom, the Putumayo has long been a site of mass immigration and exile, of subjugation and insurgency, and of violence. By way of a study of literature of and on the Putumayo by Latin American as well as US and European writers, Colombia’s Forgotten Frontier explores the history and enduring significance of this Amazonian border zone, which has been visited both physically and imaginatively by figures such as Roger Casement, José Eustasio Rivera, and William Burroughs. Travel writing, testimony, diaries, letters, journalism, oral history, songs, photographs, and ‘pulp’ fiction are all considered alongside more conventional forms such as the novel. Whilst geographically peripheral, the Putumayo has played a central role in Colombia and beyond, both historically and, crucial to this study, culturally, producing a literature of extreme experience, marginality, and conflict.Less
Coming to prominence during the tropical booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the Rubber Boom, the Putumayo has long been a site of mass immigration and exile, of subjugation and insurgency, and of violence. By way of a study of literature of and on the Putumayo by Latin American as well as US and European writers, Colombia’s Forgotten Frontier explores the history and enduring significance of this Amazonian border zone, which has been visited both physically and imaginatively by figures such as Roger Casement, José Eustasio Rivera, and William Burroughs. Travel writing, testimony, diaries, letters, journalism, oral history, songs, photographs, and ‘pulp’ fiction are all considered alongside more conventional forms such as the novel. Whilst geographically peripheral, the Putumayo has played a central role in Colombia and beyond, both historically and, crucial to this study, culturally, producing a literature of extreme experience, marginality, and conflict.
Lesley Wylie
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311956
- eISBN:
- 9781846315220
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846315220
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The vision of the South American rainforest as a wilderness of rank decay, poisonous insects and bloodthirsty ‘savages’ in the Spanish American novela de la selva has often been interpreted as a ...
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The vision of the South American rainforest as a wilderness of rank decay, poisonous insects and bloodthirsty ‘savages’ in the Spanish American novela de la selva has often been interpreted as a belated imitation of European travel literature. This book offers a new reading of the genre by arguing that, far from being derivative, the novela de la selva re-imagined the tropics from a Latin American perspective, redefining tropical landscape aesthetics and ethnography through parodic rewritings of European perceptions of Amazonia in fictional and factual travel writing. The book explores how writers throughout post-independence Latin America turned to the jungle as a locus for the contestation of both national and literary identity, harnessing the superabundant tropical vegetation and native myths and customs to forge a descriptive vocabulary which emphatically departed from the reductive categories of European travel writing.Less
The vision of the South American rainforest as a wilderness of rank decay, poisonous insects and bloodthirsty ‘savages’ in the Spanish American novela de la selva has often been interpreted as a belated imitation of European travel literature. This book offers a new reading of the genre by arguing that, far from being derivative, the novela de la selva re-imagined the tropics from a Latin American perspective, redefining tropical landscape aesthetics and ethnography through parodic rewritings of European perceptions of Amazonia in fictional and factual travel writing. The book explores how writers throughout post-independence Latin America turned to the jungle as a locus for the contestation of both national and literary identity, harnessing the superabundant tropical vegetation and native myths and customs to forge a descriptive vocabulary which emphatically departed from the reductive categories of European travel writing.
Lucy Evans
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781381182
- eISBN:
- 9781781384855
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381182.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book examines the representation of community in contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature, focusing on the most recent wave of Anglophone Caribbean short story writers following the genre’s ...
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This book examines the representation of community in contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature, focusing on the most recent wave of Anglophone Caribbean short story writers following the genre’s revival in the mid 1980s. The first extended study of Caribbean short stories, it presents the phenomenon of interconnected stories as a significant feature of late twentieth and early twenty-first century Anglophone Caribbean literary cultures. Lucy Evans contends that the short story cycle and collection, literary forms regarded by genre theorists as necessarily concerned with representations of community, are particularly appropriate and enabling as a vehicle through which to conceptualise Caribbean communities. The book covers short story collections and cycles by Olive Senior, Earl Lovelace, Kwame Dawes, Alecia Mckenzie, Lawrence Scott, Mark Mcwatt, Robert Antoni and Dionne Brand. It argues that the form of interconnected stories is a crucial part of these writers’ imagining of communities which may be fractured, plural and fraught with tensions, but which nevertheless hold together. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of community, bringing literary representations of community into dialogue with models of community developed in the field of Caribbean anthropology. The works analysed are set in Trinidad, Jamaica and Guyana, and in several cases the setting extends to the Caribbean diaspora in Europe and North America. Looking in turn at rural, urban, national and global communities, the book draws attention to changing conceptions of community around the turn of the millennium.Less
This book examines the representation of community in contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature, focusing on the most recent wave of Anglophone Caribbean short story writers following the genre’s revival in the mid 1980s. The first extended study of Caribbean short stories, it presents the phenomenon of interconnected stories as a significant feature of late twentieth and early twenty-first century Anglophone Caribbean literary cultures. Lucy Evans contends that the short story cycle and collection, literary forms regarded by genre theorists as necessarily concerned with representations of community, are particularly appropriate and enabling as a vehicle through which to conceptualise Caribbean communities. The book covers short story collections and cycles by Olive Senior, Earl Lovelace, Kwame Dawes, Alecia Mckenzie, Lawrence Scott, Mark Mcwatt, Robert Antoni and Dionne Brand. It argues that the form of interconnected stories is a crucial part of these writers’ imagining of communities which may be fractured, plural and fraught with tensions, but which nevertheless hold together. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of community, bringing literary representations of community into dialogue with models of community developed in the field of Caribbean anthropology. The works analysed are set in Trinidad, Jamaica and Guyana, and in several cases the setting extends to the Caribbean diaspora in Europe and North America. Looking in turn at rural, urban, national and global communities, the book draws attention to changing conceptions of community around the turn of the millennium.
Liz Harvey-Kattou
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620054
- eISBN:
- 9781789629569
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620054.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Costa Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, ...
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Costa Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, lies an exclusionary rhetoric of nationalism bound up in the concept of the tico, as many Costa Ricans refer to themselves. Beginning by considering the very idea of national identity and what this constitutes, this book explores the nature of the idealised tico identity, demonstrating the ways in which it has assumed a white supremacist, Central Valley-centric, patriarchal, heteronormative stance based on colonial ideals. Chapters two and three then go on to consider the literature and films produced that stand in opposition to this normative image of who or what is tico and their creation as vehicles of soft power which aim to question social norms. This book explores protest literature from the 1970s by Quince Duncan, Carmen Naranjo, and Alfonso Chase who narrate their experiences from the margins of society by virtue of their identity as Afro-Costa Rican, feminist, and homosexual authors. Cinema from the twenty-first century is then analysed to demonstrate the nuanced and intersectional position chosen by national directors Esteban Ramírez, Paz Fábrega, Jurgen Ureña, and Patricia Velásquez to challenge the dominant nation-image as they reinscribe youth culture, Afro-Costa Rica, a female consciousness, and trans identity into the fabric of the nation.Less
Costa Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, lies an exclusionary rhetoric of nationalism bound up in the concept of the tico, as many Costa Ricans refer to themselves. Beginning by considering the very idea of national identity and what this constitutes, this book explores the nature of the idealised tico identity, demonstrating the ways in which it has assumed a white supremacist, Central Valley-centric, patriarchal, heteronormative stance based on colonial ideals. Chapters two and three then go on to consider the literature and films produced that stand in opposition to this normative image of who or what is tico and their creation as vehicles of soft power which aim to question social norms. This book explores protest literature from the 1970s by Quince Duncan, Carmen Naranjo, and Alfonso Chase who narrate their experiences from the margins of society by virtue of their identity as Afro-Costa Rican, feminist, and homosexual authors. Cinema from the twenty-first century is then analysed to demonstrate the nuanced and intersectional position chosen by national directors Esteban Ramírez, Paz Fábrega, Jurgen Ureña, and Patricia Velásquez to challenge the dominant nation-image as they reinscribe youth culture, Afro-Costa Rica, a female consciousness, and trans identity into the fabric of the nation.
Erin Twohig
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620214
- eISBN:
- 9781789629576
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620214.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Contesting the Classroom is the first scholarly work to analyze both how Algerian and Moroccan novels depict the postcolonial classroom, and how postcolonial literature is taught in Morocco and ...
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Contesting the Classroom is the first scholarly work to analyze both how Algerian and Moroccan novels depict the postcolonial classroom, and how postcolonial literature is taught in Morocco and Algeria. Drawing on a corpus of contemporary novels in French and Arabic, it shows that authors imagined the fictional classroom as a pluralistic and inclusive space, often at odds with the narrow nationalist vision of postcolonial identity. Yet when authors wrote about the school, they also had to consider whether their work would be taught in schools. As this book’s original research on the teaching of literature shows, Moroccan and Algerian schools have largely failed to promote the works of local authors in public school curricula. This situation has dramatically altered literary portraits of education: novels marginalized in the public education system must creatively reimagine what pedagogy looks like and where it can take place.Less
Contesting the Classroom is the first scholarly work to analyze both how Algerian and Moroccan novels depict the postcolonial classroom, and how postcolonial literature is taught in Morocco and Algeria. Drawing on a corpus of contemporary novels in French and Arabic, it shows that authors imagined the fictional classroom as a pluralistic and inclusive space, often at odds with the narrow nationalist vision of postcolonial identity. Yet when authors wrote about the school, they also had to consider whether their work would be taught in schools. As this book’s original research on the teaching of literature shows, Moroccan and Algerian schools have largely failed to promote the works of local authors in public school curricula. This situation has dramatically altered literary portraits of education: novels marginalized in the public education system must creatively reimagine what pedagogy looks like and where it can take place.
Jacqueline Couti
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781383018
- eISBN:
- 9781781384046
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781383018.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Dangerous Creole Liaisons explores a French Caribbean context to broaden discussions of sexuality, nation building, and colonialism in the Americas. In so doing, this book offers a glimpse of the ...
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Dangerous Creole Liaisons explores a French Caribbean context to broaden discussions of sexuality, nation building, and colonialism in the Americas. In so doing, this book offers a glimpse of the literary and political scene in Martinique and Guadeloupe in the nineteenth century. This study examines how white Creoles perceived their contributions to French nationalism in their writings as they portrayed sexualized female bodies and sexual and racial difference to advance their political ideologies. Questioning their exhilarating exoticism and titillating eroticism underscores the ambiguous celebration of the Creole woman as both seductress and an object of lust. She embodies the Caribbean as a space of desire and a political site of contest that reflects colonial, slave and post-slave societies. The under-researched white Creole writers and non-Caribbean authors (such as Lafcadio Hearn and Jenny Manet) who traveled to and wrote about these islands offer an intriguing gendering and sexualization of colonial and nationalist discourses. Their use of the floating motif of the female body as the nation exposes a cultural cross-pollination, an intense dialogue of political identity between continental France and her Caribbean colonies. This book suggests that this cross-pollination still persists. Eventually, representations of Creole women’s bodies (white and black) bring two competing conceptions of nationalism into play: a local, bounded, French nationalism against a transatlantic and more fluid nationalism that included the Antilles in a “greater France.”Less
Dangerous Creole Liaisons explores a French Caribbean context to broaden discussions of sexuality, nation building, and colonialism in the Americas. In so doing, this book offers a glimpse of the literary and political scene in Martinique and Guadeloupe in the nineteenth century. This study examines how white Creoles perceived their contributions to French nationalism in their writings as they portrayed sexualized female bodies and sexual and racial difference to advance their political ideologies. Questioning their exhilarating exoticism and titillating eroticism underscores the ambiguous celebration of the Creole woman as both seductress and an object of lust. She embodies the Caribbean as a space of desire and a political site of contest that reflects colonial, slave and post-slave societies. The under-researched white Creole writers and non-Caribbean authors (such as Lafcadio Hearn and Jenny Manet) who traveled to and wrote about these islands offer an intriguing gendering and sexualization of colonial and nationalist discourses. Their use of the floating motif of the female body as the nation exposes a cultural cross-pollination, an intense dialogue of political identity between continental France and her Caribbean colonies. This book suggests that this cross-pollination still persists. Eventually, representations of Creole women’s bodies (white and black) bring two competing conceptions of nationalism into play: a local, bounded, French nationalism against a transatlantic and more fluid nationalism that included the Antilles in a “greater France.”
Martin Munro
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310799
- eISBN:
- 9781846313080
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313080
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book reinterprets and analyses post-1946 Haitian writing as a literature of exile. It moves between texts that have emerged out of different places and different times, and outlines generational ...
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This book reinterprets and analyses post-1946 Haitian writing as a literature of exile. It moves between texts that have emerged out of different places and different times, and outlines generational shifts and changes in Haitian exiled writing. This book touches on fields such as Caribbean studies, postcolonial studies, francophone studies, migration studies, and African–American studies.Less
This book reinterprets and analyses post-1946 Haitian writing as a literature of exile. It moves between texts that have emerged out of different places and different times, and outlines generational shifts and changes in Haitian exiled writing. This book touches on fields such as Caribbean studies, postcolonial studies, francophone studies, migration studies, and African–American studies.
Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620283
- eISBN:
- 9781789629699
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Discontinued
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620283.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This is the first book-length study of the relationship between science fiction, the techno-scientific policies of independent India, and the global non-aligned movement that emerged as a response to ...
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This is the first book-length study of the relationship between science fiction, the techno-scientific policies of independent India, and the global non-aligned movement that emerged as a response to Cold War and decolonization. Today, science-fiction writers are often used as government advisors on techno-scientific and defence policies. Such relationships between literature, policy and geo-politics have a long and complex history. Glimpses of this history can be seen in the case of the first generation of post-colonial Indian science fiction writers and their critical entanglements with both techno-scientific policies and the strategy of international non-alignment pursued by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. This investigation reveals the surprisingly long and relatively unknown life of Indian science fiction, as well as the genre’s capacity to imagine alternative pathways to techno-scientific and geo-political developments that dominate our lives today.Less
This is the first book-length study of the relationship between science fiction, the techno-scientific policies of independent India, and the global non-aligned movement that emerged as a response to Cold War and decolonization. Today, science-fiction writers are often used as government advisors on techno-scientific and defence policies. Such relationships between literature, policy and geo-politics have a long and complex history. Glimpses of this history can be seen in the case of the first generation of post-colonial Indian science fiction writers and their critical entanglements with both techno-scientific policies and the strategy of international non-alignment pursued by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. This investigation reveals the surprisingly long and relatively unknown life of Indian science fiction, as well as the genre’s capacity to imagine alternative pathways to techno-scientific and geo-political developments that dominate our lives today.
Nicki Hitchcott and Dominic Thomas (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781781380345
- eISBN:
- 9781781387184
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380345.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
What does Afro-Europe signify? This volume explores the concept and possibility of a black European community by analysing the ways in which contemporary Francophone African writers articulate and ...
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What does Afro-Europe signify? This volume explores the concept and possibility of a black European community by analysing the ways in which contemporary Francophone African writers articulate and interrogate their complex relationships with European society, culture and history. Readers will discover the symbiotic ways in which Africa has transformed/been transformed (in/by) Europe and in turn how Africanness has (re)defined Europeanness. To this end, the volume places scholarly essays addressing the relationship between the francophone and Afro-European context alongside short stories and essays by some of the most critically-acclaimed and influential producers of Afropean writing today: Fatou Diome, Alain Mabanckou, Léonora Miano, Wilfried N'Sondé, Sami Tchak and Abdourahman Waberi. Works by these authors are discussed in and across the scholarly interventions, generating dialogue around what it means to be ‘Francophone’ and ‘Afropean’ in the twenty-first century. At a time when it is no longer easy to define what Europe really is, this book considers to what extent the category ‘Afropean’ may prove helpful in improving our understanding of the complex ways in which minority communities conceive of identity in Europe today and address the range of issues impacting them. The notion of ‘Afropeanism’ is of course relatively new, and this book does not claim to offer an exhaustive analysis of the term's usage and/or potential pertinence. Rather, the cultural, political, and social circumstances of Europe today are reflected in discussions surrounding the term and perhaps not surprisingly, in the diverse and diverging perspectives adopted by the scholars and creative writers.Less
What does Afro-Europe signify? This volume explores the concept and possibility of a black European community by analysing the ways in which contemporary Francophone African writers articulate and interrogate their complex relationships with European society, culture and history. Readers will discover the symbiotic ways in which Africa has transformed/been transformed (in/by) Europe and in turn how Africanness has (re)defined Europeanness. To this end, the volume places scholarly essays addressing the relationship between the francophone and Afro-European context alongside short stories and essays by some of the most critically-acclaimed and influential producers of Afropean writing today: Fatou Diome, Alain Mabanckou, Léonora Miano, Wilfried N'Sondé, Sami Tchak and Abdourahman Waberi. Works by these authors are discussed in and across the scholarly interventions, generating dialogue around what it means to be ‘Francophone’ and ‘Afropean’ in the twenty-first century. At a time when it is no longer easy to define what Europe really is, this book considers to what extent the category ‘Afropean’ may prove helpful in improving our understanding of the complex ways in which minority communities conceive of identity in Europe today and address the range of issues impacting them. The notion of ‘Afropeanism’ is of course relatively new, and this book does not claim to offer an exhaustive analysis of the term's usage and/or potential pertinence. Rather, the cultural, political, and social circumstances of Europe today are reflected in discussions surrounding the term and perhaps not surprisingly, in the diverse and diverging perspectives adopted by the scholars and creative writers.
Lucille Cairns
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382622
- eISBN:
- 9781786945273
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382622.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Francophone Jewish Writers: Imagining Israel explores autobiographies, memoirs, and novels written by French-language Jewish writers in order to get an idea of Francophone Jewish imaginings of ...
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Francophone Jewish Writers: Imagining Israel explores autobiographies, memoirs, and novels written by French-language Jewish writers in order to get an idea of Francophone Jewish imaginings of Israel. Cairns contextualises her analysis of the texts in this book by drawing on social and political history as well as ideas of philosophy, journalism, psychoanalysis and sociology. The book foregrounds the differing emotional investments in Israel coming from both Francophone Jews physically situated in Israel and from diasporic Jews in France, thus investigating the ‘special’ Jewish relationship between the two countries.Less
Francophone Jewish Writers: Imagining Israel explores autobiographies, memoirs, and novels written by French-language Jewish writers in order to get an idea of Francophone Jewish imaginings of Israel. Cairns contextualises her analysis of the texts in this book by drawing on social and political history as well as ideas of philosophy, journalism, psychoanalysis and sociology. The book foregrounds the differing emotional investments in Israel coming from both Francophone Jews physically situated in Israel and from diasporic Jews in France, thus investigating the ‘special’ Jewish relationship between the two countries.
Peter T. Bradley and David Cahill
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853239147
- eISBN:
- 9781846313264
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313264
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The reception of the ‘discovery’, conquest, and colonisation of Spanish America spawned a rich imaginative literature. The case studies presented in this book represent two distinct types of ...
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The reception of the ‘discovery’, conquest, and colonisation of Spanish America spawned a rich imaginative literature. The case studies presented in this book represent two distinct types of imagining by two diametrically different groups: literate, and in some cases erudite Europeans, and a vanquished native nobility. The former endeavored to make sense of Spain's (and Portugal's) ‘marvellous possessions’ in the New World with the limited conceptual tools at their disposal, the latter to construct a colonial identity based on their shared ancestral memory while incorporating elements from the even more wondrous Hispanic culture that had overwhelmed them.Less
The reception of the ‘discovery’, conquest, and colonisation of Spanish America spawned a rich imaginative literature. The case studies presented in this book represent two distinct types of imagining by two diametrically different groups: literate, and in some cases erudite Europeans, and a vanquished native nobility. The former endeavored to make sense of Spain's (and Portugal's) ‘marvellous possessions’ in the New World with the limited conceptual tools at their disposal, the latter to construct a colonial identity based on their shared ancestral memory while incorporating elements from the even more wondrous Hispanic culture that had overwhelmed them.