Synopses & Reviews
Edward W. Said remains one of the most important literary and cultural critics in the world. A towering figure in postcolonial studies, Said may be equally well regarded for his scholarship in comparative literature, critical theory, and intellectual history. Less well known, perhaps, is Said's immense influence on geocriticism or spatial literary studies. The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said brings together a variety of essays which, each in its own way, highlight the significance of Said's work for contemporary spatial criticism. With contributions from both established literary critics and emerging scholars, this collection provides a representative sample of work being done in the wake of Said's multifaceted and enormous critical project.
Review
"The focus of Tally's
The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said is how Said's work can function as a prism via which Geo-political and cultural 'spaces' may be critically explored. It gives this collection its particular originality amid the many books about 'the spatial turn' and also in Said studies generally these days since it is the tenth anniversary of his death. As one generation of critics retires, and a new one is ushered in during a time when the future of the humanities is uncertain, this collection is a welcome reminder of what the best criticism can do in and for the world." - Daniel T. O'Hara, Professor of English and Inaugural Mellon Professor of Humanities, Temple University, USA
"Edward W. Said pioneered the postcolonial momentum that would replace a global concept of historical time that privileged the West by a geographical perspective, which has enabled the non-Western victims of this imperial Western concept of historical time to become visible on a global scale. The essays in Robert Tally's edited volume The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said constitute welcomed contributions to this urgent Saidian initiative." - William V. Spanos, Distinguished Professor of English, Binghamton University, USA
Synopsis
Edward W. Said is considered one of the most influential literary and postcolonial theorists in the world. Affirming Said's multifaceted and enormous critical impact, this collection features essays that highlight the significance of Said's work for contemporary spatial criticism, comparative literary studies, and the humanities in general.
About the Author
Robert T. Tally Jr. is Associate Professor of English at Texas State University, USA. He is the author of Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism, Utopia in the Age of Globalization, Spatiality, and the editor of Geocritical Explorations and Literary Cartographies, among others.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The World, the Text, and the Geocritic; Robert T. Tally Jr.
1. Said, Space, and Biopolitics: Giorgio Agamben's and D. H. Lawrence's States of Exception; Russell West-Pavlov
2. Orient Within, Orient Without: Said's "Hostipitality" towards Arnoldian Culture; Emel Tastekin,
3. Edward W. Said, the Sphere of Humanism, and the Neoliberal University; Jeffrey Hole
4. Back to Beginnings: Reading Between Aesthetics and Politics; Daniel Rosenberg Nutters
5. Revisiting Said's "Secular Criticism": Anarchism, Enabling Ethics, and Oppositional Ethics; Darwin H. Tsen and Charlie Wesley
6. Transnational Identity in Crisis: Re-reading Edward W. Said's Out of Place; Sobia Khan
7. De-Orienting Aesthetic Education; Cameron Bushnell
8. Dangerous Insight: (Not) Seeing Australian Aborigines in the Narrative of James Murrells; Kristine Kelly
9. Exilic Consciousness and Alternative Modernist Geographies in the Work of Olive Schreiner and Katherine Mansfield; Elizabeth Syrkin
10. Mundus Totus Exilium Est: Reflections on the Critic in Exile; Robert T. Tally Jr.