Politicising World Literature

Politicising World Literature
Author: May Hawas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-04-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0429535368

Politicising World Literature: Egypt, Between Pedagogy and the Public engages with postcolonial and world literature approaches to examine the worldly imaginary of the novel genre and assert the political imperative to teaching world literature. How does canonising world literature relate to societal, political or academic reform? Alternating between close reading of texts and literary history, this monograph studies a corpus of novels and travelogues in English, Arabic, French, Czech and Italian to historicise Egypt’s literary relations with different parts of the world in both the modern period and the pre-modern period. In this rigorous study, May Hawas argues that protagonists, particularly in times of political crises, locate themselves as individuals with communal or political affiliations that supersede, if not actually resist, national affiliations.

A History of World Literature

A History of World Literature
Author: Theo D'haen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2024-05-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040021700

A History of World Literature is a fully revised and expanded edition of The Routledge Concise History of World Literature (2012). This remarkably broad and informative book offers an introduction to “world literature.” Tracing the term from its earliest roots and situating it within a number of relevant contexts from postcolonialism, decoloniality, ecocriticism, and book circulation, Theo D’haen in ten tightly-argued but richly-detailed chapters examines: the return of the term “world literature” and its changing meaning; Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur and how this relates to current debates; theories and theorists who have had an impact on world literature; and how world literature is taught around the world. By examining how world literature is studied around the globe, this book is the ideal guide to an increasingly popular and important term in literary studies. It is accessible and engaging and will be invaluable to students of world literature, comparative literature, translation, postcolonial and decoloniality studies, and materialist approaches, and to anyone with an interest in these or related topics.

The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature

The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature
Author: Ato Quayson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1316517888

This book addresses the way cities have given rise to key aesthetic dispositions that are central to debates in World Literature.

The Routledge Companion to World Literature

The Routledge Companion to World Literature
Author: Theo D'haen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2022-09-30
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1000625966

This fully updated new edition of The Routledge Companion to World Literature contains ten brand new chapters on topics such as premodern world literature, migration studies, world history, artificial intelligence, global Englishes, remediation, crime fiction, Lusophone literature, Middle Eastern literature, and oceanic studies. Separated into four key sections, the volume covers: the history of world literature through significant writers and theorists from Goethe to Said, Casanova and Moretti the disciplinary relationship of world literature to areas such as philology, translation, globalization, and diaspora studies theoretical issues in world literature, including gender, politics, and ethics; and a global perspective on the politics of world literature Comprehensive yet accessible, this book is ideal as an introduction to world literature or for those looking to extend their knowledge of this essential field.

Domestic Intersections in Contemporary Migration Fiction

Domestic Intersections in Contemporary Migration Fiction
Author: Lucinda Newns
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 135139049X

Homing the Metropole presents a new approach to diasporic fiction that reorients postcolonial readings of migration away from processes of displacement and rupture towards those of placement and homemaking. While notions of home have frequently been associated with essentialist understandings of nation and race, an uncritical investment in tropes of homelessness can prove equally hegemonic. By synthesising postcolonial and intersectional feminist theory, this work establishes the migrant domestic space as a central location of resistance, countering notions of the private sphere as static, uncreative and apolitical. Through close readings of fiction emerging from the African, Caribbean and South Asian diasporas, it reassesses our conception of home in light of contemporary realities of globalisation and forced migration, providing a valuable critique of the celebration of unfixed subject positions that has been a central tenet of postcolonial studies.

Transformative Fictions

Transformative Fictions
Author: Daniel Just
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2022-07-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100060800X

Transformative Fictions: World Literature and Personal Change engages with current debates in world literature over the past twenty years, addressing the nature of literary influence in centers and peripheries, the formation of transnational literary and pedagogical canons, and the role of translation and regionalism in how we relate to texts from around the globe. The author, Daniel Just, argues for a supranational but sub-global perspective of regions that emphasizes practical reasons for reading and focuses on the potential of literary texts to stimulate personal transformation in readers. One of the recurring dilemmas in these debates is the issue of delimitation of world literature. The trouble with the world as a frame of reference is that no single researcher is bound to have the in-depth knowledge and linguistic skills to discuss works from all countries. In response, this book revives literary theory and recasts it for the purposes of world literature, by making a case for the continuing relevance of literature in the age of new media. With the examples of fictional and nonfictional writings by Milan Kundera, Witold Gombrowicz and Bohumil Hrabal, Just shows that regional literatures offer differing methods of activating readers and thereby prompting personal change. This book would be of general interest to anyone who wants to explore personal change through literature but is particularly indispensable for literary professionals, researchers, and postgraduate and graduate students.

Speaking Politically

Speaking Politically
Author: Eleni Philippou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 103
Release: 2021-04-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000369021

In this monograph Theodor Adorno’s philosophy engages with postcolonial texts and authors that emerge out of situations of political extremity – apartheid South Africa, war-torn Sri Lanka, Pinochet’s dictatorship, and the Greek military junta. This book is ground-breaking in two key ways: first, it argues that Adorno can speak to texts with which he is not historically associated; and second, it uses Adorno’s theory to unlock the liberatory potential of authors or novels traditionally understood to be "apolitical". While addressing Adorno’s uneven critical response and dissemination in the Anglophone literary world, the book also showcases Adorno’s unique reading of the literary text both in terms of its innate historical content and formal aesthetic attributes. Such a reading refuses to read postcolonial texts exclusively as political documents, a problematic (but changing) tendency within postcolonial studies. In short, the book operates as a two-way conversation asking: "What can Adorno’s concepts give to certain literary texts?" but also reciprocally, "What can those texts give to our conventional understanding of Adorno and his applicability?" This book is an act of rethinking the literary in Adornian terms, and rethinking Adorno through the literary.

Creative Radicalism in the Middle East

Creative Radicalism in the Middle East
Author: Caroline Rooney
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1838601171

Addressing the question of how neoliberal ideology has served to conflate the radical left with extremism, this book examines how the Arab left has asserted itself in the context of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism during and after the Arab uprisings. It examines how the Arab cultural left has offered a critique of the signifying practices of political hegemonies in the region and argues that though creative expression as constituted in the very language of the Arab uprisings, it has put forward its own alternatives Using a wide array of texts and sources, both Arab and non-Arab, the opening chapters of the book identify how ethical and radical values pertaining to sociality are co-opted by political leaders in the Middle East and turned into jargon. Later chapters outline resistance to this co-option through a poetics of inter-subjectivity that takes structures of feeling into account, ranging from disappointment, despair and distrust, to dignity, solidarity and reconfigured senses of the sacred. In showing how psychological and affective states relate to signifying practices, the book offers an original conceptual framework for differentiating 'radicalization' from the creative radicalism of the Arab avant-garde.

Challenges and Reforms in Gulf Higher Education

Challenges and Reforms in Gulf Higher Education
Author: Reynaldo Gacho Segumpan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-12-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 100382482X

This edited volume explores the educational reforms and challenges in higher education in the Gulf countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Featuring a truly global spread of contributors and perspectives from countries such as Bahrain, India, Georgia, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, the book navigates experience-based and practice-linked research spectrum of the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education. It targets key challenges such as the move to online and distance learning, the impact of job-related stress, and the preparedness of institutional risk management. Using qualitative research, autoethnographic accounts, and case study findings, the book makes recommendations for reform implementation within higher education as well as discusses the wider socio-cultural and political landscape left by the pandemic in the Gulf region. Highlighting current trends and challenges based on empirical works of the authors, the book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and academics in the field of higher education, international and comparative education, and leadership strategy more specifically. Those involved with educational technology, education policy, and middle eastern studies will also find the book of value.

Re-Politicising International Investment Law in Latin America through the Duty to Regulate Paradigm

Re-Politicising International Investment Law in Latin America through the Duty to Regulate Paradigm
Author: María José Luque Macías
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2021-05-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 303073272X

This book offers insights into how international investment law (IIL) has frustrated states’ protection of human rights in Latin America, and IIL has generally abstained from dealing with inter-regime frictions. In these circumstances, this study not only argues that IIL should be an object of contention and debate (‘politicisation’). It also contends that Latin American countries have traditionally been the frontrunners in the politicisation of international legal instruments protecting foreign investment, questioning whether the paradigms informing their claims’ articulation are adequate to frame this debate. It demonstrates that the so-called ‘right to regulate’ is the paradigm now prevalently used to challenge IIL, but that it is inadequate from a human rights perspective. Hence, the book calls for a re-politicisation of IIL in Latin America through a re-conceptualization of how states’ regulation of foreign investment is understood under international human rights law, which entails viewing it as an international duty. After determining what the ‘duty to regulate’ constitutes in relation to the right to water and indigenous peoples’ right to lands based on human rights doctrine, the book analyses the extent to which Latin American countries are currently re-politicising IIL through an articulation of this international duty, and arbitral tribunals’ responses to their argumentative strategies. Based on these findings, the book not only proposes investment treaties’ reform to anchor the ‘duty to regulate’ paradigm in IIL, and in the process, to induce tribunals’ engagement with human rights arguments when they come to underpin respondent states’ defences in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In addition, drawing upon the (now likely defunct) idea of creating a regional ISDS tribunal, the book briefly reflects on options available to such a tribunal in terms of dealing with troubling normative/institutional interactions between regimes during ISDS proceedings.