Literary Criticism Semiotics & Theory
Zones of Instability
Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation
- Publisher
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Initial publish date
- Feb 2004
- Category
- Semiotics & Theory, Politics, General
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780801868030
- Publish Date
- Feb 2004
- List Price
- $70.95
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Description
Attempts by writers and intellectuals in former colonies to create unique national cultures are often thwarted by a context of global modernity, which discourages particularity and uniqueness. In describing unstable social and political cultures, such "third-world intellectuals" often find themselves torn between the competing literary requirements of the "local" culture of the colony and the cosmopolitan, "world" culture introduced by Western civilization.
In Zones of Instability, Imre Szeman examines the complex relationship between literature and politics by exploring the production of nationalist literature in the former British empire. Taking as his case studies the regions of the British Caribbean, Nigeria, and Canada, Szeman analyzes the work of authors for whom the idea of the"nation" and literature are inexorably entwined, such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, and V.S. Naipaul. Szeman focuses on literature created in the two decades after World War II, decades in which the future prospects for many colonies went from extreme political optimism to extreme political disappointment. He finds that the "nation" can be read as that space in which literature is thought to be able to conjoin two things that history has separated—the writer and the people.
About the author
Imre Szeman holds the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta and is the cofounder of the Petrocultures Research Group. He is the coauthor of After Oil and the coeditor of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism.
Editorial Reviews
"Szeman speaks softly (and subtly), but as a leading-edge theorist of postcolonial literature and cultural studies he has earned the intellectual authority that underlies the present bold project."
"Offers an interesting and valuable argument."
University of Toronto Quarterly
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