Old and New Names. Afropolitanism, Failed-State Fiction and World Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-124
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Mari
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Failed State ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Theory And Criticism

AbstractSince its establishment more than a decade ago, the cultural and political debate on Afropolitanism has been characterized by several different positions. In particular, the Afropolitan opposition to any kind of essentialism (Eze 2014) has been counterweighed by the necessity of a connection to “knowable African communities, nations and traditions” (Gikandi 2011, 9). This debate has been reproducing a typical oscillation of postcolonial theory and criticism between the celebration of hybridity (Bhabha 1994) and the interpretation of postcolonial texts as “national allegories” (Jameson 1986). At the same time, Afropolitanism appears to be related to a more recent phenomenon, which has been defined as “national failure” in political analysis (Zartman 1995; Rotberg 2004) and “failed-state fiction” in literary criticism (Marx 2008). The latter sheds a different light on Afropolitanism, by showing its advantages and its limits both on a national and transnational level. In view of this, Afropolitan literature – including the paradigmatic works by Helon Habila (2002, 2007, 2010) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006, 2013) here analyzed – appears to be based on the persistence of “old names,” or categories, in an uneven but fruitful coexistence with the “new” ones (Eze 2016).

Postcolonial Theory, Multiculturalism and the Israeli Left: A Critique of Post-Zionism

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nada Matta
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Hebrew Language

This article is a theoretical critique of the post-Zionist discourse that emerged in Israel in the early 1990s. It examines articles published by a group of leading Israeli intellectuals in Teoriya vi-Bekorit (Theory and Criticism), a Hebrew-language journal which promotes post-Zionist discourse. It focuses on three major components of the discourse: postcolonial theory, identity-politics and multiculturalism. It examines how these terms were imported into Israeli culture and society. The article highlights the problematic of applying these terms to Israel, and applies existing Marxist critique of the three theoretical dimensions. Finally, it argues for a distinctive post-Zionist critique, one that is based on solidarity among people, rather than difference and multiplicity.

On the specfics of postcolonial research in the conetmporary Ukrainian literary studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 446-461
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Baydalova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Science Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude

The postcolonial studies have been under discussion in the Ukrainian historiography, social science, culture studies and literary criticism since 1990 years. They have originated from American, European, and Australian academic studies and became more and more popular in modern Ukrainian culture recently. The nation and the nationalism, Orientalism, multicultural and ambivalent individuality self-presentation, the search of cultural identity, the problem of ambivalent attitude to the past are in the paradigm of postcolonial studies. The problems of national identity, the totalitarian past, the interactions with neighboring countries especially Russia and Poland, the instable Ukrainian society’s condition are analyzed under the postcolonial ideas in the Ukrainian intellectual discourse. The postcolonial theory has become the main interpretative strategy of the Ukrainian researchers lately. Nevertheless, there is no unconditional modus vivendi in the Ukrainian academia about postcolonial conceptions, strategies and principles. One of the most important unsolved issues is the question of correlation of postcolonial and postmodern components of the Ukrainian national literature. The inclusion of the studies of trauma and anticolonial and posttotalitarian discourses into the framework of the postcolonial studies is the most distinguishing feature of postcolonial studies in the Ukraine.

Milton in China ‘Yet Once More’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bing Yan
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Collaborative Context ◽  
Chinese Literary Criticism ◽  
Near Future

This chapter overviews Chinese reception of Milton, with an emphasis on some of the most well-known Chinese translations of Paradise Lost. Close readings of these translations against Milton’s original demonstrate the difficulties of and resolutions for rendering Milton’s verse specific to Chinese. The subsequent discussion of the paratexts accompanying Chinese translations and of ‘introduction to world literature’ series gives a sense of the collaborative context that has shaped and continues to shape today’s general reception of Milton in China. That politically charged reception, eager to view Milton’s Satan as the embodiment of the poet’s revolutionary spirit, also dominates some recent works of Chinese literary criticism. The chapter ends by conceding that, while Milton scholarship in China has been relatively univocal and is still young, recent developments in world literature promise that innovative and intriguing work on Milton can be expected from China in the near future.

Double Thoughts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
De Man ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

scholarly journals Dancing with Myriam: Creating and Staging a New Metaphor for the Process of Translation

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Paula Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
African Women ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
North African ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Oral Interpretation ◽  
Doctoral Work ◽  
As Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

This article tells the story, and analyzes the development, of a “staged metaphor” for the translation process, from its chance inception over ten years ago, to the more recent revision and staging of the script. In 2005, I was teaching world literature at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, while also researching the writing of Irish and North African women. I chose to focus on those women writing in Irish, Tachelhit, Arabic, or French, whose work had been translated into English. I was initially inspired by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill’s poem, “The Language Issue,” which compares the "sending forth" of her writing to a potential reader, to the story of Moses being discovered by Pharoah’s daughter. My ultimate goal was to produce a chamber theatre play, based on the Irish and North African texts, which would dramatize a metaphor for the translation process. This was an outgrowth of my doctoral work, in which I had drawn on oral interpretation theorists, who see the performance of literary texts as an accepted means of doing literary criticism. Accordingly, I also expanded the project to include the observations of translation theorists, and I incorporated these into the creation of the script for a chamber theatre performance. After directing a staging of the script in Morocco in 2007, I realized that I needed to add more choreographed movement, and to incorporate the character of Moses’s and Myriam’s mother into the metaphor. The addition of dance, and the foregrounding of the relationship between Myriam and her mother, draws unapologetically on female relationships. It is my conclusion that the revised metaphor, with the addition of these elements, is validated by Yves Bonnefoy’s and Henri Meschonnic's depictions of “translation as relationship with an author,” and that, the metaphor does indeed “provide . . . fresh insights.”

scholarly journals Introduction: Ethical Literary Criticism, Brain Text, and New Readings of World Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (37) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Biwu NA ◽  
Maria Luisa Torres Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature

3Postcolonial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-62
Author(s):  
Edward Powell
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Form Features

Abstract This chapter covers selected research in postcolonial theory published in 2018, beginning with books and edited collections before discussing journal special issues. Literary form features in many of these works, particularly as reconsiderations of ‘minor’ genres and their relationship to capitalism. Meanwhile, the place of postcolonial studies itself within capitalism came under new scrutiny, along with that of world literature.

Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, World Literature, and the Colonial Comparisons

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-349
Author(s):  
Blaž Zabel
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
British Empire ◽  
World Literature ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Imperial Politics

Abstract This article discusses the work of the early Irish comparatists Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, who in 1886 published the first monograph in English in comparative literature. By bringing into discussion Posnett’s lesser-known journalistic publications on politics, the essay argues that his comparative project was importantly determined by the contemporary challenges of British imperial politics and by his own position in the British Empire. The article investigates several aspects of Posnett’s work in the context of British colonialism: his understanding of literature and literary criticism, his perception of the English and French systems of national literature, and his understanding of world literature and classical literature. Recognising the imperial and colonial context of Comparative Literature additionally highlights the development of literary comparisons, which have marked subsequent discussions in the discipline.

Postcolonial Theory and Criticism

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Stuart Murray ◽  
Laura Chrisman ◽  
Benita Parry
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Theory And Criticism

scholarly journals Writing World Literature: Approaches from the Maghreb

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (5) ◽  
pp. 1386-1395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Hiddleston
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Relative Status ◽  
Franco Moretti ◽  
National Borders

World Literature is a Notoriously Ambiguous Term. Since Goethe Began Referring to a Universal Weltliteratur IN 1827, the meaning of world literature has passed through many mutations, and, with the resurgence of interest in the term that followed David Damrosch's publication in 2003 of his provocative What Is World Literature?, it has generated a good deal of controversy. Although it appears to describe a type of literature or group of texts, world literature is more often used to designate a critical perspective. World literature is not so much a canon of works conceived to be globally or universally significant as an approach to literary criticism. What this critical approach entails, however, is often unclear and frequently freighted with cultural and sociopolitical assumptions that challenge the supposed openness of world literature. Most theorists agree that the notion of world literature invites exploration of the ways in which texts exceed national borders, but the relative status of national and international sociocultural frameworks remains highly contentious, as do critics' understandings of a text's “worldliness” and mode of circulation. As Franco Moretti famously asserts, world literature is “not an object, it's a problem”; it requires ongoing debate.

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