Books in the Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures series

In a world where bi- and multilingualism have become quite normal, this volume identifies a gap in the critical apparatus in postcolonial studies in order to read cultural texts emerging out of multilingual contexts. The role of translation and an awareness of the multilingual spaces in which many postcolonial texts are written are fundamental issues with which postcolonial studies needs to engage in a far more concerted fashion. The essays in this book by contributors from Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Malaysia, Quebec, Ireland, France, Scotland, the US, and Italy outline a pragmatics of language and translation of value to scholars with an interest in the changing forms of literature and culture in our times. Essay topics include: multilingual textual politics; the benefits of multilingual education in postcolonial countries; the language of gender and sexuality in postcolonial literatures; translational cities; postcolonial calligraphy; globalization and the new digital ecology.

This volume defines versions of the transnational in their historical and cultural specificity. By "locating," the contributors contextualize historical and contemporary understandings of the fluid term "transnational," which vary in relation to the disciplines involved. This kind of historical and geographical "locating" implicitly turns against forms of contemporary transnational euphoria which, inspired by poststructural models of all-encompassing semiospheres, on the one hand, and by visions of the utopian communicative potential of new media like the internet, on the other, see national and ethnic paradigms as easily superseded by transnational agendas. By differentiating between various forms of transnational ideals and ideas in historical and geographical perspective since the Renaissance, the contributors aim to rediscover distinctions -- for instance between transnationalisms and cosmopolitanisms -- which neo-liberal transnational euphoria has tended to erase.

Explores the emergence of a post-secular condition of the contemporary world, in which organized, conventional religion has failed politically. This book discusses various Anglophone novels that reflect the multireligious nature of the Indian sub-continent, including such religions and forms of belief as Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and Christianity.

Explores the formations and configurations of British colonial discourse on India through a reading of prose narratives of the 1600-1920 period. This work argues that colonial discourse often relied on aesthetic devices in order to describe and assert a degree of narrative control over Indian landscape.

Explores the impact that the "African Writers Series" had on the development of African writing in English in the 1960's by examining the works of such authors as George Lamming, Samuel Selvon, Wilson Harris, and Derek Walcott. This book takes into account debates in the discipline of book history, publishing histories, and canon formation.

Working with processes of translocation enabled Edward Said to point out interdependence and complementarity across geographical borders and disciplinary boundaries while recognizing cultural difference and the distinct historical experiences of colonizer and colonized. This book brings into focus Said's politics of reading, from his literary criticism in English to his political columns in Arabic. The international contributors-from Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Switzerland, and the United States-investigate his intellectual legacies without necessarily identifying themselves with the critical positions these involve. Instead of treating his work as a unitary theoretical system, the various arguments explored offer a critical assessment of those situations in which his writing has entered into a productive relationship with other theoretical positions and interlocutors. The collection considers location, which has always been a central category in and for Said's writing; readings, which designates the acts by which, according to Said, the world comes to be constituted; and legacies, which pertains to the many fields across the boundaries of established academic disciplines that have taken up Said's challenges. The critical positions visited in this book include critical and cultural theory, postcolonialism, literary studies, theatre and performance studies, and visual and music studies.

This volume considers literary fiction by Muslim writers, dealing with the interaction of Muslim and non-Muslim cultures and exploring liberal orthodoxies such as secularism and multiculturalism. It covers writers such as Rushdie, Kureishi, Hamid, Aslam and Shamsie in essays by experts in English, South Asian, and postcolonial literatures in English.

Without readers and audiences, viewers and consumers, the postcolonial would be literally unthinkable. And yet, postcolonial critics have historically neglected the modes of reception and consumption that make up the politics, and pleasures of meaning-making during and after empire. Thus, while recent criticism and theory has made large claims for reading; as an ethical act; as a means of establishing collective, quasi-political consciousness; as identification with difference; as a mode of resistance; and as an impulsion to the public imagination, the reader in postcolonial literary studies persists as a shadowy figure. This collection answers the now pressing need for a distinctively postcolonial take on the rapidly expanding area of reader and reception studies. Written by some of the top scholars in the field, these essays reveal readers and reception to be varied and profoundly unstable subjects that challenge many of our assumptions and preconceptions of the postcolonial - from the notion of reading as national fellowship to the demands of an ethics of reading.

The importance of Antonio Gramsci¿s work for postcolonial studies can hardly be exaggerated, and in this volume, contributors situate Gramsci's work in the vast and complex oeuvre of postcolonial studies. Specifically, this book endeavors to reassess the impact on postcolonial studies of the central role assigned by Gramsci to culture and literature in the formation of a truly revolutionary idea of the national¿a notion that has profoundly shaped the thinking of both Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. Gramsci, as Iain Chambers has argued, has been instrumental in helping scholars rethink their understanding of historical, political, and cultural struggle by substituting the relationship between tradition and modernity with that of subaltern versus hegemonic parts of the world. Combining theoretical reflections and re-interpretations of Gramsci, the scholars in this collection present comparative geo-cultural perspectives on the meaning of the subaltern, passive revolution, hegemony, and the concept of national-popular culture in order to chart out a political map of the postcolonial through the central focus on Gramsci.

With contributions from an international range of leading authorities on literature, history, art and geography, this book discusses the cultural significance of islands.

Postcolonialism is used as a backdrop to examine and question the traditional genres of travel writing, nature poetry, adventure tales, autobiography and the epic, assessing their relevence to the Caribbean experience.

Examines the aesthetic portrayal of tourism in postcolonial literatures. Looking at the cultural and ecological effects of mass tourism development in states, this title argues that postcolonial writers not only dramatize the industry's most exploitative operations but also provide blueprints toward sustainable tourism futures.

Examining prose, poetry and drama by writers including Achebe, Naipaul, Coetzee, Walcott, Krog, Fugard, and versions of Shakespeare, this title pursues the often ambiguous paths of nostalgia as it has been represented within and beyond Europe.

Explores the connections between a secular Indian nation and fiction in English by a number of postcolonial Indian writers of the 1980s and 90s. Examining writers such as Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, and Amitav Ghosh, this book investigates different aspects of postcolonial identity within the secular framework of the Anglophone novel.

This text provides detailed readings of individual poems by women poets whose work has not yet received the sustained critical attention it deserves.

Focusing on ways in which cultural nationalism has influenced, this book presents an analysis of eight leading Sri Lankan writers: Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunasekera, Shyam Selvadurai, A Sivanandan, Jean Arasanayagam, Carl Muller, James Goonewardene, and Punyakante Wijenaike. It interrogates the discourses of territoriality and boundary marking.

Defines versions of the transnational in their historical and cultural specificity. This title contextualizes historical and contemporary understandings of the fluid term 'transnational', which vary in relation to the disciplines involved. It aims to rediscover distinctions between transnationalisms and cosmopolitanisms.

Includes the essays that discuss narrative strategies employed by international writers when dealing with rape and sexual violence, whether in fiction, poetry, memoir or drama. This book incorporates arguments about trauma and resistance in order to establish different dimensions of healing.

A study that uses critical theory to investigate the history of how people have thought about the antipodes - the places and people on the other side of the world - from ancient Greece to present-day literature and digital media.

Revitalizing theoretical concepts associated with feminism, gender studies and cultural studies, this book explores how art history, popular culture, translation studies, psychoanalysis and news media offer productive ways to associate with Arab women's writing that work beyond a limiting socio-historical context.

Analyzes authors such as Malcolm Lowry, Leonard Woolf, Juan Rulfo, Wilson Harris, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Romesh Gunesekera to make a materialist study of the relation between paradise myths and the ideologies and economies of colonialism and neo-imperialism in literature from Mexico, Zanzibar and Sri Lanka.

Presents the two important fields of postcolonial studies and life writing.