Transculturation and aesthetics : ambivalence, power, and literature / edited by Joel Kuortti ; cover image, Joel Kuortti and Gordon Collier ; contributors, Arnaud Barras [and ten others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kuortti, Joel, editor, cover designer.

Collier, Gordon, cover designer.

Barras, Arnaud, contributor.

Series:

Cross/cultures ; 179.

Cross/Cultures ; 179

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Postcolonialism in literature.

Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature.

Immigrants in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 p.)

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, Netherlands ; New York, New York : Rodopi, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This collection is a timely reflection on the momentous concept of transculturalism. With its historical roots in globalization, transculturation, oriented to (new) aesthetics, seeks new cultural formations, and, with its heterogeneous author- and readership, enlists active participation by the individual. The volume focuses on the interplay between and lapses within interrelated domains of study – postcolonial, diaspora, and world-literary – which attend to the material and discursive circumstances of the literary work. The various readings argue for a situated mode of reading that attends to literary meaning emerging from transaction across, struggle between, and appropriation of cultures, both intra- and internationally, and, by definition, not tied exclusively to a colonial historical paradigm. The overarching themes – ambivalence, power, and literature – are approached transculturally and aesthetically with four distinct concerns in mind: theorization of transculturation; diaspora and migration; the African legacies of colonial slavery and its global aftermath; and localized topics that diversify the interpretation and definition of transculturation and its relation to an (emerging) aesthetic that goes beyond nationally constrained (geographical, cultural, linguistic, literary, et cetera) boundaries. Themes range from literary representations of archaeological sites to the contest over meaning that follow efforts to exhume the past, from the ethics of queer love in diaspora to the effects of global literary marketing, from the development of transcultural identities in the colonial encounter to domestication and foreignization in the translation of Aboriginal texts. Authors discussed include Michael Ondaatje, Vernon Anderson, Barry Unsworth, Salman Rushdie, Yvonne Vera, Chiang Hsun, Sally Morgan, Doris Pilkington, Sarfraz Manzoor, Sathnam Sanghera, Yasmin Hai, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Timothy Wangusa, Fred D’Aguiar, Amitav Ghosh, and Jack Kerouac.

Contents:

Preliminary material / Editors Transculturation and Aesthetics

Digging Far and Deep / GESA MACKENTHUN

Salman Rushdie’s Transcultural ‘Jesture’ in The Enchantress of Florence / JOEL KUORTTI

Transculturation, Postcolonial Literature, and the Global Literary Market: The Case of Yvonne Vera’s American Literary Career / ERIK FALK

The Erotics of Queer Diaspora in Chiang Hsun’s Yu ai shu: Xie gei Ly’s M (Epistles of Eros: Letters to Ly’s M) / FRED CHIH-WEI CHANG

Constructing Individuality in Contemporary British Multicultural Memoirs / ULLA RAHBEK

Negotiating Transcultural Identities in African Literature / DOMINICA DIPIO

The Aesthetics of Indigenization in Post-Apartheid Black South African Literature / VICKI BRIAULT MANUS

“In this time brown did not stick around” / ŽELJKA ŠVRLJUGA

Aboriginal Australian Literature on the European Market / DANICA ČERČE and OLIVER HAAG

The Aesthetics of the Tide: The Ecosystem as Matrix for Transculturation in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide / ARNAUD BARRAS

“Whither goest thou, America?” / MICHAEL J. PRINCE

Notes on Contributors / Editors Transculturation and Aesthetics

Index / Editors Transculturation and Aesthetics.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index at the end of each chapters.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed March 13, 2015).

ISBN:

94-012-1197-3

OCLC:

905918691

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401211970 DOI