This collection has one central theoretical focus, viz. stock-taking essays on the present and future status of postcolonialism, transculturalism, nationalism, and globalization. These are complemented by ‘special’ angles of entry (e.g. ‘dharmic ethics’) and by considerations of the global impress of technology (African literary studies and the Internet).
Further essays have a focus on literary-cultural studies in Australia (the South Asian experience) and New Zealand (ecopoetics; a Central European émigrée perspective on the nation; the unravelling of literary nationalism; transplantation and the trope of translation).
The thematic umbrella, finally, covers studies of such topics as translation and interculturalism (the transcendental in Australian and Indian fiction; African Shakespeares; Canadian narrative and First-Nations story templates); anglophone / francophone relations (the writing and rewriting of crime fiction in Africa and the USA; utopian fiction in Quebec); and syncretism in post-apartheid South African theatre.
Some of the authors treated in detail are: Janet Frame; Kapka Kassabova; Elizabeth Knox; Annamarie Jagose; Denys Trussell; David Malouf; Patrick White; Yasmine Gooneratne; Raja Rao; Robert Kroetsch; Thomas King; Chester Himes; Julius Nyerere; Ayi Kwei Armah; Léopold Sédar Senghor; Simon Njami; Abourahman Waberi; Lueen Conning; Nuruddin Farah; Athol Fugard; Frantz Fanon; Julia Kristeva; Shakespeare. The collection is rounded off by creative writing (prose, poetry, and drama) by Bernard Cohen, Jan Kemp, Vincent O’Sullivan, Andrew Sant, and Sujay Sood.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Permissions and Illustrations
Hena MAES-JELINEK: Postcolonial Criticism at the Crossroads: Subjective Questionings of an Old-Timer
Bernard COHEN: From Foreign Logics
THE FUTURE OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
Graham HUGGAN: Postcolonialism, Globalization, and the Rise of (Trans)cultural Studies
Sandra PONZANESI: Beyond Postcolonial Theory? Paradoxes and Potentialities of a Necessary Paradigm
Frank SCHULZE-ENGLER: From Postcolonial to Preglobal: Transnational Culture and the Resurgent Project of Modernity
Sujay SOOD: An Introduction to Dharmic Ethics
Dominique BEDIAKO: African Literary Studies and the Internet: No Territory for Africans
Babila J. MUTIA: Meaning in Character: Armah’s Teacher in The Beautyful Ones Revisited
Virginia RICHTER: A New Desire for the grands récits? Rereading Senghor and Fanon
Anna J. SMITH: Nationalist Without a Nation: Kapka Kassabova
Janet WILSON: New Zealand Literary Nationalism and the Transcultural Future, or: Will the Centre Hold?
NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIAN POETRY
Denys TRUSSELL: Poetry as Translation of History and Nature: The Poem Archipelago and the Ecopoetic Paradigm in the Pacific
JAN KEMP: Queen of the Castle; Blue Irises
Vincent O’SULLIVAN: Lucky table; Reading the Russians; Poetry, oh yes!
Andrew SANT: Islandhood; A Firework Maker on the Domestic Front; The Fireworks Lesson
TRANSLATION AND INTERCULTURALISM
Krishna BARUA: The Dancing Prankster or the Enlightened Seer? Raja Rao’s The Cat and Shakespeare and Patrick White’s The
Solid Mandala
Bernth LINDFORS: “Beware the Ides of March”: Amending Julius Nyerere’s Julius Caesar
Ilka SAAL: Taking on The Tempest: Problems of Postcolonial Re/presentation
Barbara SCHMIDT-HABERKAMP: Cross-Cultural Experience and Existence in Yasmine Gooneratne’s Novel A Change of Skies
Russell WEST: Translator In Transit: Postcolonial Identities in Transformation on the Pacific Rim; Annamarie Jagose’s In
Translation
Gundula WILKE : Storytelling as a Process of Transcultural Mediation: The Examples of Robert Kroetsch and Thomas King
ANGLOPHONE/FRANCOPHONE RELATIONS
Adele KING: Connections: Simon Njami/Chester Himes; Abourahman Waberi/Nuruddin Farah
Maîtres chez nous – Masters in Our Own House:
Ralph PORDZIK: The Treatment of Quebec Separatism in Canadian Projective Fiction
SYNCRETISM IN THE THEATRE
Haike FRANK: The Revival of Storytelling in Post-Apartheid South African Theatre: Identity-Construction in Lueen Conning’s A
Coloured Place and and Athol Fugard and The Cast’s My Life
Sujay SOOD: The Man of Man
List of Contributors.