‘Rented spaces’: Italian postcolonial literature

AbstractThe present study intends to examine the link between clothes and cultural identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Hema and Kaushik” (2008). It will argue that Lahiri explores her protagonists’ cultural displacement through their items of clothing. We want to suggest that the protagonists’ clothes are employed in each narrative as signifiers for the characters’ cultural identities. The study will further show that each item of clothing could be loaded with the ideological signification of two separate cultures. In other words, it aims to demonstrate how ideology imposes its values, beliefs, and consequently its dominance through the dress codes each defines for its subjects. Moreover, it intends to suggest that the link between clothing and identity is most visible and intense in the case of female immigrant characters rather than men. Drawing on Luptan’s structure of the Cinderella line, we will explore Lahiri’s protagonists’ cultural transformation from simple ethnic girls to stylish American ladies through their items of clothing. The study will conclude that the “Cinderella line” does not work in Lahiri’s realistic stories the way it does in fairy tales and romance fiction.

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Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature

Postcolonial Studies ◽

10.1080/13688790.2017.1337479 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 20 (4) ◽

pp. 510-513

Author(s):

Zhou Hau Liew

Keyword(s):

Postcolonial Literature ◽

Southeast Asian ◽

The South

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Recreating Experience in Nigerian Fiction: Camillus Ukah’s Sweet Things and the Politics of its Production

Commonwealth Youth and Development ◽

10.25159/2663-6549/6356 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Solomon Awuzie

Keyword(s):

Postcolonial Literature ◽

Third Generation ◽

The Novel ◽

Creative Activity ◽

Nigerian Literature ◽

The Way

This article contends that, in the same way as some postcolonial literature, the latter third generation Nigerian literature is a product of the writer’s experience. When the writer does not reproduce his sociopolitical experience, he reshapes his expectations into literature. The writer manipulates his experience into creative activity that fulfils his innate desire – this is the same desire which he is ordinarily unable to achieve in reality. This article argues further that even though the literature is a product of the writer’s experience, it is harmless and beneficent. Using Camillus Ukah’s Sweet Things as a representative text of the fiction produced by a latter third generation Nigerian literature writer, emphasis is made on the way in which Camillus Ukah has recreated his experience. It concludes that through the novel, Ukah expresses his bitterness towards a certain matrimonial experience that is of his particular concern.

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Postcolonial Literature and the Task of (Re-)imagining the Maghreb

Postcolonial Maghreb and the Limits of IR ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-19985-2_3 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 65-90

Author(s):

Jessica da Silva C. de Oliveira

Keyword(s):

Postcolonial Literature

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POSTCOLONIAL AESTHETICS: AFFECT, AFFECTION OR AFFECTATION?

Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities ◽

10.46568/jssh.v58i1.26 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 13-23

Author(s):

Faisal Nazir

Keyword(s):

Cultural Identity ◽

Postcolonial Literature ◽

Foreign Languages ◽

Emotional Involvement ◽

Affective Dimension ◽

Alternative Approach ◽

The Aesthetic ◽

Deep Sense

This article analyzes the concept of postcolonial aesthetics as developed and debated by such critics as Bill Ashcroft, Elleke Boehmer and Robert Young. In particular, it critiques Ashcroft’s theorization of the postcolonial aesthetics in his article ‘Towards a Postcolonial Aesthetics’ and recommends an alternative approach to the conceptualization of postcolonial aesthetics with reference to Muhammad Hasan Askari’s essay on Ahmed Ali’s novel Twilight in Delhi. It questions Ashcroft’s emphasis on the hybrid linguistic makeup of the postcolonial text as the source of the particular aesthetic effects of the text and emphasizes the need for differentiating between affection– the writer’s deep sense of engagement with and involvement in the narrative – and affectation – a clever use of native words and expressions by the writer to authenticate his or her cultural identity – in discussing the affective dimension of a postcolonial text. The article argues that the aesthetic impact of the postcolonial text is produced by the intensity of experience and emotional involvement of the postcolonial writer (affection) as opposed to being produced by creative wordplay and mixing of local and foreign languages (affectation). Thus, the article contributes to the ongoing debates about the aesthetic dimension of postcolonial literature.

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