Postcolonial nations, islands, and tourism : reading real and imagined spaces / Helen Kapstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kapstein, Helen, author.

Series:

Rethinking the island

Rethinking The Island

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Islands in literature.

Islands.

National characteristics in literature.

National characteristics.

Tourism in literature.

Tourism.

Postcolonialism in literature.

Postcolonialism.

Physical Description:

xxxiv, 191 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

regular print

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Rowman & Littlefield International, [2017]

Summary:

Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism examines how real and literary islands have helped to shape the idea of the nation in a postcolonial world. Through an analysis of a variety of texts ranging from literature to prison correspondence to tourist questionnaires it exposes the ways in which nationalism relies on fictions of insularity and intactness, which the island and island tourism appear to provide. The island space seems to offer the ideal replica of the nation, and tourist practices promise the liberation of leisure, the gaze, and mobility. However, the very reliance on the constantly shifting and eroding island form exposes an anxiety about boundaries and limits on the part of the postcolonial nation. In appropriating island tourism, the new nation tends to recapitulate the failures and crises of the colonial nation before it. Starting with the first literary tourist, Robinson Crusoe, Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism goes on to show how authors such as JM Coetzee, Romesh Gunesekera, and Julian Barnes have explored the outlines and implications of islandness. It argues that each text expresses a profound discomfort with national form by undoing the form of the island through a variety of narrative strategies and rhetorical manoeuvres. By throwing the category of the island into crisis, these texts let uncertainties about the postcolonial nation and its violent practices emerge as doubt in the narratives themselves.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. A Literature of Failure: Reading Foe and Defoe

I. "Infinite Labour"

II. Making Stories

III. "A Compleat Enclosure"

IV. Rhythmic Returns

V. Locating the Real

2. On Seeing England for the First Time (Again)

I. Foresight

II. A Ready-Made Island: Julian Barnes and Jamaica Kincaid

III. The Anti-Theme Park Theme Park

IV. The Prospect of England: Travelogues of the Falklands War

V. Hindsight

3. "A New Kind of Safari": Gunesekera's Sri Lanka

I. The National Longing for Form: Reading Reef

II. War-Watching: Nature, War, and Tourism in The Sandglass and Beyond

III. The Returning Native in Heaven's Edge

IV. A Tour Through the Whole Island: Noontide Toll

4. The Rim of Things

I. Becoming an Island

II. Displacement and Containment

III. Discipline and Control: Scopic Practices of the Penal Colony

IV. Pleasure and Punishment

5. "Every Native Would Like a Tour"

I. Brand South Africa

II. Value-Added Narrative

III. Happy Endings.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Kapstein, Helen. Postcolonial nations, islands, and tourism.

ISBN:

9781783486458

1783486457

OCLC:

957504269

Publisher Number:

99975432317

99986332802

40027346620