Paradise discourse, imperialism, and globalization : exploiting Eden / Sharae Deckard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Deckard, Sharae, 1978-

Series:

Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; 25.

Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; 25

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Paradise in literature.

Colonies in literature.

Imperialism in literature.

Literature and globalization.

Mexico--In literature.

Mexico.

Africa, East--In literature.

Africa, East.

Sri Lanka--In literature.

Sri Lanka.

Physical Description:

x, 252 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2010.

Summary:

This comparative study, the first of its kind, discusses paradise discourse in a wide range of writing from Mexico, Zanzibar, and Sri Lanka, including novels by authors such as Malcolom Lowry, Leonard Woolf, Juan Rulfo, Wilson Harris, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Romesh Gunesekera, Tracing dialectical tropes of paradise across the "long modernity" of the capitalist world system, Deckard roads literature from postcolonial nations in context with colonial discourse in order to demonstrate how paractise begins as a topos motivating European exploration and colonization, shifts into an ideological myth justifying imperial exploitation, and finally becomes a literary motif used by contemporary writers to critique neocolonial representations and conditions in the age of globalization.

Combining a range of critical perspertives-cultural materials ecoritical, and postcolonial-the volume opens up a deeper understanding of the relation between paractise discourse and the destructive dynamics of plantation tourism, and global capital. Deckard uncovers literature from East, Africa and South Asia which has been previously overlooked in mainstream postcolonial criticism, and gestures to how the utopian dimensions of the paractise myth might be reclaimed to promote cultural resistance.

Contents:

Gold-land of "wild surmise": Mexico, colonialism, and informal imperialism

"Perverse paradiso": Malcolm Lowry and the writing of modern Mexico

Dark paradise, lost ophir: colonial imaginaries of East Africa

Paradise rejected: Abdulrazak Gurnah and the Swahili world

Taprobane, Serendib, Adam's peak: Ceylon as "paradise of Dharma"

"Make your own Eden": violence, myth, and ecology in Romesh Gunesekera.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415997393

0415997399

9780203865170

0203865170

OCLC:

237880705