A Postmodern Nationalist

A Postmodern Nationalist
Author: Phillip Rothwell
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780838755853

"This is the first book in the English language devoted to the study of the work of Mozambique's leading contemporary author, Mia Couto. Couto's fiction is riddled by a central paradox - it forges a distinct postmodern national identity for a country historically plagued by repeated and detrimental interference from abroad. Phillip Rothwell argues that Couto is a writer who eschews and reinforces the national frontier. In fact, Couto produces a cultural phenomenon that is markedly Mozambican by corrupting aspects of the European legacy Portugal left on the African continent, fusing this distortion with a corrupted version of African heritage, and demarcating literary boundaries through fluidity." "The book details Couto's life and literary trajectory, and interprets essential aspects of Mozambican political and cultural history before undertaking a range of analyses of his work. The postmodern relativization of the concept of a unitary truth furnishes the springboard for an interrogation of what "truth" has meant to Mozambique as exemplified in Couto's texts. The paradoxes inherent in the politics of orthography are scrutinized in Couto's universe to illustrate the aporia prevalent in an atavistic reclaiming of a pre-Portuguese system of writing. Rothwell then engages with the moral meaning of orality and literacy in the tradition Couto both defies and defines, to demonstrate Couto's simultaneous disavowal of misographic and graphophile epistemologies. The manners in which Couto breaches the frontier between the conscious and unconscious realms and blurs gender distinctions are read alongside traditional delineations in order to understand the extent to which Couto's message is radically political. Rothwell concludes with a reading of one of Couto's most potent works in which, through an empowering attack on the United Nations' invasion of Mozambique, Couto enjoins his fellow nationals to begin to resist the postmodern age." "Couto's ambivalent use of the tropes of postmodernism are discussed throughout the book, particularly the way in which it has evolved into a political agenda that is fiercely Mozambican. Rothwell demonstrates Couto's reevaluation of Grand Narratives and shows how, in the case of the Mozambican culture of today, postmodernism has become the only Grand Narrative left worth critiquing." "Rothwell explores a broad cross-section of Couto's literary output, from his early short stories to his more recent novels. He places these within the context of a Mozambican and wider lusophone cultural backdrop, providing essential reading and source of reference for all interested in contemporary Portuguese, African, and world literatures."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction
Author: Gerasimus Katsan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611475937

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction investigates the ways postmodernist literary techniques have been adopted by Greek authors. Taking into consideration the global impetus of postmodernism, the book examines its local implications. Framed by a discussion of major postmodernist thinkers, the book argues for the ability of local cultures to retain their uniqueness in the face of globalization while at the same time adapting to the new global situation. The combination of external global influences and the specific internal concerns of Greek national literature makes the emergence of postmodernism in Greece distinctive from that of other national contexts. The book engages in larger theoretical debates about the "crisis" of national identity in the context of postmodern globalization and the resurgence of nationalist ideology either as a response to globalization or the exigencies of historical events. This crisis has been brought on in part by the very postmodernist and poststructuralist questioning of the ideologies upon which nation-states construct themselves. The central argument of the book is that postmodernist Greek writers question the idea of national identity based on both the impact of globalization and a reexamination of the discourses of national ideology: they suggest a turn away from the traditional concerns with cultural homogeneity towards an acceptance of multiplicity and diversity, which is reflected through experimentation with postmodernist literary techniques. Consequently, the unifying idea of this book is "national identity" as it is reconfigured in recent contemporary novels. My analysis incorporates the view that metafiction is a "borderline" or "marginal" discourse that exists on the boundary between fiction and criticism. The book illuminates the connections between the formal concerns of contemporary authors and the larger debates and philosophical underpinnings of postmodernism in general.

Beyond Nationalist Frames

Beyond Nationalist Frames
Author: Sumit Sarkar
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2002-09-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253342034

The political context in which historians of India find themselves today, says Sumit Sarkar, is dominated by the advance of the Hindu Right and globalized forms of capitalism, while the historian's intellectual context is dominated by the marginalization of all varieties of Marxism and an academic shift to cultural studies and postmodern critique. In Beyond Nationalist Frames, one of India's foremost contemporary historians offers his view of how the craft of history should be practiced in this complex conjuncture. In studies of colonial time-keeping, Rabindranath Tagore's fiction, and pre-Independence Bengal, Sarkar explores new approaches to the writing of history. Essays on contemporary politics consider the implications of the "Hindu Bomb," the rewriting of national history textbooks by Hindu fundamentalists, and the issue of conversion to Christianity. Scholars in all the fields touched by recent developments in South Asian historiography—anthropology, feminist theory, comparative literature, cultural studies—will find this a stimulating and provocative collection of essays, as will anyone interested in Indian politics.

Prophets Facing Backward

Prophets Facing Backward
Author: Meera Nanda
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813533582

The leading voices in science studies have argued that modern science reflects dominant social interests of Western society. Following this logic, postmodern scholars have urged postcolonial societies to develop their own "alternative sciences" as a step towards "mental decolonization". These ideas have found a warm welcome among Hindu nationalists who came to power in India in the early 1990s. In this passionate and highly original study, Indian-born author Meera Nanda reveals how these well-meaning but ultimately misguided ideas are enabling Hindu ideologues to propagate religious myths in the guise of science and secularism. At the heart of Hindu supremacist ideology, Nanda argues, lies a postmodernist assumption: that each society has its own norms of reasonableness, logic, rules of evidence, and conception of truth, and that there is no non-arbitrary, culture-independent way to choose among these alternatives. What is being celebrated as "difference" by postmodernists, however, has more often than not been the source of mental bondage and authoritarianism in non-Western cultures. The "Vedic sciences" currently endorsed in Indian schools, colleges, and the mass media promotes the same elements of orthodox Hinduism that have for centuries deprived the vast majority of Indian people of their full humanity. By denouncing science and secularization, the left was unwittingly contributing to what Nanda calls "reactionary modernism." In contrast, Nanda points to the Dalit, or untouchable, movement as a true example of an "alternative science" that has embraced reason and modern science to challenge traditional notions of hierarchy.

The Making of a Caribbean Avant-Garde

The Making of a Caribbean Avant-Garde
Author: Therese Kaspersen Hadchity
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-08-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1557539367

Focusing on the Anglophone Caribbean, The Making of a Caribbean Avant-Garde describes the rise and gradual consolidation of the visual arts avant-garde, which came to local and international attention in the 1990s. The book is centered on the critical and aesthetic strategies employed by this avant-garde to repudiate the previous generation’s commitment to modernism and anti-colonialism. In three sections, it highlights the many converging factors, which have pushed this avant-garde to the forefront of the region’s contemporary scene, and places it all in the context of growing dissatisfaction with the post-colonial state and its cultural policies. This generational transition has manifested itself not only in a departure from “traditional” in favor of “new” media (i.e., installation, performance, and video rather than painting and sculpture), but also in the advancement of a “postnationalist postmodernism,” which reaches for diasporic and cosmopolitan frames of reference. Section one outlines the features of a preceding “Creole modernism” and explains the different guises of postnationalism in the region’s contemporary art. In section two, its momentum is connected to the proliferation of independent art spaces and transnational networks, which connect artists across and beyond the region and open up possibilities unavailable to earlier generations. Section three demonstrates the impact of this conceptual and organizational evolution on the selection and exhibition of Caribbean art in the metropole.

Nationalism and Modernism

Nationalism and Modernism
Author: Prof Anthony D Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134923333

The first major study in over three decades to explore the essential arguments of all the major theoretical interpretations of nationalism, from the modernist approaches of Gellner, Nairn, Breuilly, Giddens and Hobsbawm to the alternative paradigms of van den Bergh and Geertz, Armstrong and Smith himself. In a style accessible to the student and the general reader Smith traces the changing view of this hotly discussed topic within the current political, cultural and socioeconomic arena. He also analyses the contributions of such historians, sociologists and political scientists as Seton-Watson, Reynolds, Hastings, Horowitz and Brass. The survey concludes with an analysis of post-modern approaches to national identity, gender and nation, making it indispensable reading to all those interested in gaining full and authoritative knowledge of nationalism.

Peasants, Populism, and Postmodernism

Peasants, Populism, and Postmodernism
Author: Tom Brass
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780714649405

Tracing the emergence and re-emergence of the agrarian myth in the past century the argument in this book is that at the centre of the discourse about the cultural identity of "otherness/difference" lies the concept of an innate "peasant-ness".

Christianity and the Postmodern Turn

Christianity and the Postmodern Turn
Author: Myron B. Penner
Publisher: Brazos Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2005-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1587431084

Addresses the promises and perils of postmodernity for the church today.

National Identities and Post-Americanist Narratives

National Identities and Post-Americanist Narratives
Author: Donald E. Pease
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1994
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780822314929

National narratives create imaginary relations within imagined communities called national peoples. But in the American narrative, alongside the nexus of belonging established for the national community, the national narrative has represented other peoples (women, blacks, "foreigners", the homeless) from whom the property of nationness has been removed altogether and upon whose differences from them the national people depended for the construction of their norms. Dismantling this opposition has become the task of post-national (Post-Americanist) narratives, bent on changing the assumptions that found the "national identity." This volume, originally published as a special issue of bounrary 2, focuses on the process of assembling and dismantling the American national narrative(s), sketching its inception and demolition. The contributors examine various cultural, political, and historical sources--colonial literature, mass movements, epidemics of disease, mass spectacle, transnational corporations, super-weapons, popular magazines, literary texts--out of which this narrative was constructed, and propose different understandings of nationality and identity following in its wake. Contributors. Jonathan Arac, Lauren Berlant, Robert J. Corber, Elizabeth Freeman, Kathryn V. Lingberg, Jack Matthews, Alan Nadel, Patrick O'Donnell, Daniel O'Hara, Donald E. Pease, Ross Posnock, John Carlos Rowe, Rob Wilson

The Historical Novel, Transnationalism, and the Postmodern Era

The Historical Novel, Transnationalism, and the Postmodern Era
Author: Susan Brantly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2017-02-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1315386445

This volume explores the genre of the historical novel and the variety of ways in which writers choose to represent the past. How does an author’s nationality or gender impact their artistic choices? To what extent can historical novels appeal to a transnational audience? This study demonstrates how histories can communicate across national borders, often by invoking or deconstructing the very notion of nationhood. Furthermore, it traces how the concerns of the postmodern era, such as postmodern critiques of historiography, colonialism, identity, and the Enlightenment, have impacted the genre of the historical novel, and shows this impact has not been uniform throughout Western culture. Not all historical novels written during the postmodern era are postmodern. The historical novel as a genre occupies a problematic, yet significant space in Cold War literary currents, torn between claims of authenticity and the impossibility of accessing the past. Historical novels from England, America, Germany, and France are compared and contrasted with historical novels from Sweden, testing a variety of theoretical perspectives in the process. This pitting of a center against a periphery serves to highlight traits that historical novels from the West have in common, but also how they differ. The historical novel is not just a local, regional phenomenon, but has become, during the postmodern era, a transnational tool for exploring how we should think of nations and nationalism and what a society should, or should not, look like.