Postcolonial Imaginings by David Punter
This deeply engaging, historically and culturally informed book provides new perspectives on a wide range of writers, and at the same time provides a radically new development of many of the most pertinent issues in the field of postcolonial writing and theory. It constitutes a major new engagement between the 'postcolonial' and a conception of the literary which is richly innovative in its deployment of psychoanalytic, deconstructive and other approaches to the text.The book begins with some brief background to the issue of decolonisation and its contemporary effects. It is informed throughout by a clear sense of literary and political context, within which chosen texts - by well-known writers (Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite) as well as less well-known ones (Joan Riley, Susan Power, Abdulrazak Gurnah) and writers not often seen in a postcolonial context (James Kelman, Seamus Deane, Hanif Kureishi) - can be situated. The chapters which follow are based around themes such as violent geographics; hallucination, dream and the exotic; mourning and melancholy; diaspora and exile; delocalisation and the alibi. This profoundly new approach to the complexities of the postcolonial allows the reader to appreciate some of the richness, but at the same time the political and cultural ambivalence, which underlies postcolonial writing.Throughout the book David Punter continually questions, as one would expect from his many previous books, the definition and scope of the 'postcolonial'. It is seen throughout as a phenomenon not restricted to the ex- or neo-colonies but as a key characterisation of all our lives at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is an indissoluble part of the development of national imaginings and, at the same time, an alibi for the emergence of a violently assertive 'new world order' committed to the management or obliteration of difference. By juxtaposing texts from different cultural traditions and topographies, from
Raises a plethora of important and interesting questions about, for example, 'history', the relation of literary texts to other 'narratives', and the notion pf the 'literal' reference in a literary textAn ambitious work that performs informative close readings. -- David Punter In this provocative and important book David Punter opens up new ways of thinking about the postcolonial and the literary. Starting from the idea that Where are you from? is a terroristic question, he provides an impassioned and brilliant account of the ineluctable encounters between politics, literature and the uncanny. -- Professor Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex An impassioned yet highly learned interrogation of prevalent contemporary theories and practices of postcolonial studies. ! A bold and successful attempt at expanding the definition and scope of the 'postcolonial'. ! It is a refreshing and salutary contribution. Raises a plethora of important and interesting questions about, for example, 'history', the relation of literary texts to other 'narratives', and the notion pf the 'literal' reference in a literary text. An ambitious work that performs informative close readings. In this provocative and important book David Punter opens up new ways of thinking about the postcolonial and the literary. Starting from the idea that Where are you from? is a terroristic question, he provides an impassioned and brilliant account of the ineluctable encounters between politics, literature and the uncanny. An impassioned yet highly learned interrogation of prevalent contemporary theories and practices of postcolonial studies. ! A bold and successful attempt at expanding the definition and scope of the 'postcolonial'. ! It is a refreshing and salutary contribution.
David Punter, having worked at universities in England, Scotland, Hong Kong and China, is now Professor of English at the University of Bristol. He has published over twenty monographs and edited collections in the Gothic, romantic writing, modern and contemporary writing, and literary theory. His most recent publications include Writing the Passions (2000); Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order (2000); Metaphor (2007); Modernity (2007); Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy (2009); and A New Companion to the Gothic (ed., 2012). He has also published five volumes of poetry.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780748608560 |
| ISBN 10 | 0748608567 |
| Title | Postcolonial Imaginings |
| Author | David Punter |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
| Year published | 2000-09-29 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |