Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The book explores the discursive and theoretical conditions for conceptualizing the postethnic literary. It historicizes US multicultural and postcolonial studies as institutionalized discursive formations, which constitute a paratext that regulates the reception of literary texts according to the paradigm of representativeness. Rather than following that paradigm, the study offers an alternative framework by rereading contemporary literary texts for their investment in literary form. By means of self-reflective intermedial transpositions, the writings of Sherman Alexie, Chang-rae Lee, and Jamaica Kincaid insist upon a differentiation between the representation of cultural sign systems or subject positions and the dramatization of individual gestures of authorship. As such, they form a postethnic literary constellation, further probed in the epilogue of the study focused on Dave Eggers.
Synopsis
What are the discursive and theoretical conditions for conceptualizing the notion of the postethnic literary? The book suggests an answer to this question by reading contemporary literary texts commonly classified as multicultural or postcolonial for their investment in literary form and for their dramatizations of individual gestures of authorship.
Synopsis
The Anglia Book Series (ANGB) offers a selection of high quality work on all areas and aspects of English philology. It publishes book-length studies and essay collections on English language and linguistics, on English and American literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the present, on the new English literatures, as well as on general and comparative literary studies, including aspects of cultural and literary theory.