The sites from which postcolonial cultural articulations develop and the sites at which they are received have undergone profound transformations within the last decades. This book traces the accelerating emergence of cultural crossovers and overlaps in a global perspective and through a variety of disciplinary approaches. It starts from the premise that after the ‘spatial turn’ human action and cultural representations can no longer be grasped as firmly located in or clearly demarcated by territorial entities. The collection of essays investigates postcolonial articulations of various genres and media in their spatiality and locatedness while envisaging acts of location as dynamic cultural processes. It explores the ways in which critical spatial thinking can be made productive: Testing the uses and limitations of ‘translocation’ as an open exploratory model for a critically spatialized postcolonial studies, it covers a wide range of cultural expressions from the anglophone world and beyond – literature, film, TV, photography and other forms of visual art, philosophy, historical memory, and tourism.
The extensive introductory chapter charts various facets of spatial thinking from a variety of disciplines, and critically discusses their implications for postcolonial studies. The contributors’ essays range from theoretical interventions into the critical routines of postcolonial criticism to case studies of specific cultural texts, objects, and events reflecting temporal and spatial, material and intellectual, physical and spiritual mobility. What emerges is a fascinating survey of the multiple directions postcolonial translocations can take in the future.
This book is aimed at students and scholars of postcolonial literary and cultural studies, diaspora studies, migration studies, transnational studies, globalisation studies, critical space studies, urban studies, film studies, media studies, art history, philosophy, history, and anthropology.
Contributors: Diana Brydon, Lars Eckstein, Paloma Fresno-Calleja, Lucia Krämer, Gesa Mackenthun, Thomas Martinek, Sandra Meyer, Therese-M. Meyer, Marga Munkelt, Lynda Ng, Claudia Perner, Katharina Rennhak, Gundo Rial y Costas, Markus Schmitz, Mark Stein, Silke Stroh, Kathy-Ann Tan, Petra Tournay-Theodotou, Daria Tunca, Jessica Voges, Roland Walter, Dirk Wiemann.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Illustrations and Permissions
Marga Munkelt, Markus Schmitz, Mark Stein, and Silke Stroh: Introduction: Directions of Translocation – Towards a Critical Spatial Thinking in Postcolonial Studies
Conceptual Interventions and Disciplinary Transgressions
Diana Brydon: ‘Difficult Forms of Knowing’: Enquiry, Injury, and Translocated Relations of Postcolonial Responsibility
Claudia Perner: Dislocating Imagology. And: How Much of It Can (or Should) Be Retrieved?
Dirk Wiemann: Distant Reading: Cosmopolitanism as Unconditional Reception
Space, Time, and Narration
Roland Walter: Transculturation and Narration in the Black Diaspora of the Americas
Lucia Krämer: Far Away, So Close: Translocation as Storytelling Principle in Hari Kunzru’s Transmission
Gesa Mackenthun: American Antebellum Cosmopolitanism: Herman Melville’s ‘Postcolonial’ Translocations
Lynda Ng: Translocal Temporalities in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria
Daria Tunca: “We die only once, and for such a long time”: Approaching Trauma through Translocation in Chris Abani’s Song for Night
Translation and Cultural Rewriting
Sandra Meyer: “The Story that gave this Land its Life”: The Translocation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
Therese-M. Meyer: Reading “Upstream!”: Implications of an Unconsidered Source Text to Julian Barnes’ Eighth Chapter of A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
Marga Munkelt: Myths of Rebellion: Translocation and (Cultural) Innovation in Mexican-American Literature
Diasporas, Identifications, Resistance
Paloma Fresno-Calleja: Trans/locating Pacific Identities: From the Small Island to the Largest Polynesian City in the World
Thomas Martinek: Writing (in) the Migrant Space: Discursive Nervousness in Contemporary Nigerian Short Stories
Katharina Rennhak: Daljit Nagra’s Look We Have Coming to Dover! and the Limits of the Translocal
Petra Tournay-Theodotou: “I love Cyprus but England is my home”: Eve Makis’ Eat Drink and Be Married
Jessica Voges: Laughter Movens: Functions and Effects of Laughter in Black British Literature
Transmigration: Multiple Migration, and Cultural Transgression
Silke Stroh: Theories and Practices of Transmigration: Colonial British Diasporas and the Emergence of Translocal Space
Markus Schmitz: Blurring Images: Articulations of Arab-American Crossovers
Media and Performance
Lars Eckstein: Filming Illegals: Clandestine Translocation and the Representation of Bare Life
Gundo Rial y Costas: Translating the American Dream? A Brazilian Vision of the Promised Land
Kathy-Ann Tan: Curio(us) Translocations: Site-Specific Interventions in Banglatown, London
Notes on Editors and Contributors