The Deliverance of Others : Reading Literature in a Global Age / David Palumbo-Liu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Palumbo-Liu, David, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 p.)

Place of Publication:

Duke University Press 2008

Durham, North Carolina, USA : Duke University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Deliverance of Others is a compelling reappraisal of the idea that narrative literature can expand readers' empathy. What happens if, amid the voluminous influx of otherness facilitated by globalization, we continue the tradition of valorizing literature for bringing the lives of others to us, admitting them into our world and valuing the difference that they introduce into our lives? In this new historical situation, are we not forced to determine how much otherness is acceptable, as opposed to how much is excessive, disruptive, and disturbing? The influential literary critic David Palumbo-Liu suggests that we can arrive at a sense of responsibility toward others by reconsidering the discourses of sameness that deliver those unlike ourselves to us. Through virtuoso readings of novels by J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ruth Ozeki, he shows how notions that would seem to offer some basis for commensurability between ourselves and others.

Contents:

When otherness overcomes reason

Whose story is it?

Art : a foreign exchange

Pacific Ocean feeling : affect, otherness, mediation.

Notes:

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786613854605

9781283542159

1283542153

9780822352693

0822352699

Publisher Number:

https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822395485

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access