Haunting Encounters

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Lipson Freed
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
Tools And Methods

Beginning with the basic conviction that acts of cross-cultural reading have ethical consequences, Haunting Encounters traces the narrative strategies through which certain works fiction forge connections with their readers—in particular, their white, Western readers—across boundaries of difference. Through the formal and aesthetic negotiations they carry out, which both draw readers in and set limits on their imaginative engagements, these works respond in concrete ways to the asymmetries of their circulation and consumption in our contemporary global age. By bringing the tools and methods of rhetorical narrative theory to bear on well-known works of ethnic and postcolonial literature, Haunting Encounters revises existing models of narrative ethics—both those based on empathy, and those grounded in alterity—to account for the particular complications and stakes of staging cross-cultural encounters in and through fiction. Illustrating that both sameness and difference are essential elements of our ethical encounters with fictional texts, Haunting Encounters ultimately advocates for a practice of global, comparative literary analysis that is energized, rather than confounded, by this fundamental tension.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Lipson Freed
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Ethical Relation ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Tools And Methods ◽  
Rhetorical Narrative

This chapter establishes the fundamental question at the heart of the manuscript: in an increasingly interconnected world, shaped by persistent inequalities and asymmetries of power, what role can literature play in bringing us into ethical relation with one another? Bringing the tools and methods of rhetorical narrative theory to bear on the abiding concerns of ethnic and postcolonial literature, the Introduction complicates existing models of narrative ethics, both those grounded in empathy (sameness), and those that celebrate alterity (difference). Ultimately, this chapter offers haunting as a metaphor for the complex relationships that certain works of global fiction forge with their readers across boundaries of difference: intense, temporary, and potentially transformative.

South Sea Tales

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
South Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Material

The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of ‘The Beach at Falesé, the folktale plots of ‘The Bottle Imp’ and ‘The Isle of Voices’, and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in The Ebb-Tide. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection - the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume - Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross- cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.

Living With Ambiguity: Toward Culture Exploration in Adult Second-Language Classrooms

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roumiana Ilieva
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Second Language Education ◽  
Culture Teaching ◽  
Language Classrooms

On the basis of personal experiences with immigration and current conceptualizations of culture in anthropological and culture teaching literature, this article outlines an approach to cultural instruction in adult second-language education, named "culture exploration," which calls for the recognition of ambiguity embedded in cross-cultural encounters. Culture exploration consists of employing techniques of ethnographic participant observation in and outside the classroom and holding reflective, interpretive, and critical classroom discussions on students' ethnographies. It is argued that through culture exploration students can develop an understanding of humans as cultural beings, of the relationship between language and culture, and of the necessity of living with the uncertainty inherent in cross-cultural interactions. Through this process of naming their experience of the target community culture and reflecting on it, it is hoped that students will be in a position to develop their own voice and will be empowered to act to fulfill their own goals in their new environment.

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