Showing papers in "Modern Fiction Studies in 2018"
TL;DR: Ghosh's The Hungry Tide has garnered attention from postcolonial ecocritics for its representation of the ways Western environmentalism clashes with social justice concerns for subaltern subjects.
Abstract: Abstract:Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide has garnered attention from postcolonial ecocritics for its representation of the ways Western environmentalism clashes with social justice concerns for subaltern subjects. Missing from criticism on the novel, however, is an analysis of the subtle ways that it registers the impact of climate change and the Anthropocene in South Asia. In this essay, I argue that by attending to the presence of the Anthropocene in the novel through the figure of geological deep time, we can understand the character Nirmal’s postcolonial utopianism as providing a framework for confronting the emerging crisis of climate-induced migration.
8 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the tension between imperial expansionism and national indigenization constitutes a shaping force in Turkish literary modernity, urging scholars to investigate how the epistemology of the empire-influenced by the inter-imperial landscape of the nineteenth century-infiltrates the modern national literature and politics of Turkey.
Abstract: Abstract:Calling for a historiographical shift in literary criticism, this essay stresses the expansionist vision of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, approaches its literature as a corpus of representation for imperial subjectivities, and thereby supplements the critique of the narrative of literary modernity identified with the orientalist E. J. W. Gibb. This essay argues that the tension between imperial expansionism and national indigenization constitutes a shaping force in Turkish literary modernity, urging scholars to investigate how the epistemology of the empire–influenced by the inter-imperial landscape of the nineteenth century–infiltrates the modern national literature and politics of Turkey.
7 citations
TL;DR: Aronofsky argues that it is not enough for humankind to develop passion for the more-than-human world; we must also reinvigorate faith in humanity.
Abstract: Abstract:Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 film, Noah, seeks to temper anthropocentrism and render it serviceable in the Anthropocene. Aronofsky argues that it is not enough for humankind to develop passion for the more-than-human world; we must also reinvigorate faith in humanity. And this faith must admit and yet persist in light of the evidence of human depravity that the climate crisis lays bare. Fighting for the planet, he suggests, is not merely a struggle for ecological health but a postsecular struggle for human meaning and the viability of the humanities in a vast, complex, and often unjust cosmos.
5 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Evans argues that Faulkner's Frenchman's Bend fictions (The Hamlet, Father Abraham, and Barn Burning) are an allegory of modernization and its social and cultural consequences.
Abstract: Abstract:David Evans summarizes a common critical response to Faulkner's The Hamlet, describing the novel as \"an allegory of modernization and its social and cultural consequences.\" This essay claims that Faulkner's Frenchman's Bend fictions—The Hamlet, Father Abraham, and \"Barn Burning\"—assert a largely unremarked source for modernization: the rural countryside. By tracing the modernizing energies of turn-of-the-century rural populism and its politics of rage, as well as the economic and cultural abstractions of rural capital, on display in these texts, this essay argues that they reverse a familiar trajectory in which modernity fans outland from distinctly urban environs.
4 citations
TL;DR: The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul as mentioned in this paper is a peripatetic exploration of an England in decay, saturated in pensive sadness, the novel has been read often as nostalgic for the time of...
Abstract: V. S. Naipaul's novel The Enigma of Arrival revolves around peripatetic explorations of an England in decay. Saturated in pensive sadness, the novel has been read often as nostalgic for the time of ...
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the relationship between mid-century cultural production and the cluster of problems (growth, energy use, the relation of human/nonhuman nature) that now fall under the term Anthropocene.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay examines the relationship between midcentury cultural production and the cluster of problems—growth, energy use, the relation of human/nonhuman nature—that now fall under the term “Anthropocene.” I begin by considering some of the methodological questions the Anthropocene has generated for literary studies. Then, I turn to Len Lye’s short film The Birth of the Robot (1936) and J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962). Lye’s and Ballard’s aesthetic practices dissolve abstract boundaries between nature and culture and offer images of worlds where nature is no longer the opposite of what is made but is both an object made by humans and a human-making force.
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the connection between the Euro-American trope of wilderness and colonial practices of interpretation, highlighting the way colonial epistemology is deeply embedded in conventional Euro American ways of reading, which rely on notions of discrete selfhood, linear history, abstract logic and the elimination of ambiguity.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay takes up Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy to explore the connection between the Euro-American trope of wilderness and colonial practices of interpretation. By deploying the multilayered trope of wilderness, A Mercy highlights the way colonial epistemology is deeply embedded in conventional Euro-American ways of reading—whether the text be written document, land, or human body—that rely on notions of discrete selfhood, linear history, abstract logic, and the elimination of ambiguity. Through this same trope, the novel ultimately unsettles the colonized territory of the reading process, offering a mode of reading that ruptures colonial interpretation.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the implications of employing an inter-imperial heuristic within a long-ue durée timeframe for the study of postindependence Indonesian literature, and they trace the history of shadow puppet theatre as a production of and vehicle for the politics of consecutive and contemporaneous empires in the Indonesian archipelago since the first millennium.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay investigates the implications of employing an inter-imperial heuristic within a longue durée timeframe for the study of postindependence Indonesian literature. It traces the history of shadow puppet theatre as a production of and vehicle for the politics of consecutive and contemporaneous empires in the Indonesian archipelago since the first millennium. Through a reading of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s The Fugitive (1950), this essay argues that the transmediation from theatre to text of this centuriesold performative tradition afforded post-1945 authors a symbolic solution for managing the legacies of their nation’s imperialistic encounters in their pursuit of an emancipatory cultural project.
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors outlined the theory and method of inter-imperiality, and highlighted four threads running through this special issue: the longue durée imensions of literary-political history shaped by interacting and successive empires; the understudied philosophies and aesthetics of communities that have endured successive colonizations; the sedimentation of language politics in interimperial zones; and, in these contexts, the intertwining of economics with cultural and state formations.
Abstract: Abstract:This introduction outlines the theory and method of inter-imperiality, then highlights four threads running through this special issue: the longue durée imensions of literary-political history shaped by interacting and successive empires; the understudied philosophies and aesthetics of communities that have endured successive colonizations; the sedimentation of language politics in inter-imperial zones; and, in these contexts, the intertwining of economics with cultural and state formations. This introduction sets the stage for essays on diverse authors, hailing from different hemispheres and imagining in Turkic, Slavic, Arabic, Farsi, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, as well as in French and English.
3 citations
TL;DR: This article read Heart of Darkness as a world-ecological text, examining themes of socioecological violence, waste, and exhaustion as theorized by the world ecology paradigm, arguing that the novella's "unearthly" landscape speaks to the transformative interactions of capital and nature at the commodity frontier.
Abstract: This essay reads Heart of Darkness as a world-ecological text, examining themes of socioecological violence, waste, and exhaustion as theorized by the world-ecology paradigm. Specifically, it argues that the novella’s “unearthly” landscape speaks to the transformative interactions of capital and nature at the commodity frontier, linking the novella’s language of enchantment to the subjective, irrational, and racialized devaluations necessary to world-ecological accumulation. Offering a historical reading of the gothic and antirealist elements of the text’s landscape descriptions, the essay finds theoretical relevance in its refusal to separate nature from the historical categories of colonialism, capital, and the commodity form.
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines Korean diasporic literature and argues, first, that understanding a colonial author's inter-imperial positionality allows texts to be reinterpreted in light of the matrix of competing forces in the interimperial sphere.
Abstract: Abstract:Korean culture is a paradigmatic case for studying inter-imperial dynamics as the country’s history has been shaped by the interplay of four competing empires: China, Japan, Russia, and the US. This essay examines Korean diasporic literature and argues, first, that understanding a colonial author’s inter-imperial positionality allows texts to be reinterpreted in light of the matrix of competing forces in the inter-imperial sphere. Second, the essay looks at the distinctive Korean concept of han as a product of the nation’s inter-imperial history to consider how this aesthetic tradition continues to be a hallmark of contemporary diasporic fiction.
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the discussion of borders in post-1945 fiction on Europe, focusing on the three interrelated concerns (physical borders, bordered identities and cross-border relations) that have dominated the study of geopolitical boundaries in Europe and elsewhere.
Abstract: Abstract:As yet, little research has been done on the literary treatment of borders, an issue gaining increasing coverage in fiction worldwide. Drawing on the work of Emily Hicks, Johan Schimanski, and Stephen Wolfe, as well as on the wider insights of Border Studies, this essay analyzes the discussion of borders in post-1945 fiction on Europe. Specifically, the essay focuses on the three interrelated concerns—physical borders, bordered identities and cross-border relations—that have dominated the study of geopolitical boundaries in Europe and elsewhere. The material under study includes work by Vladimir Lorchenkov, Herta Müller, Mahi Binebine, Ágota Kristóf, and Miroslav Penkov.
TL;DR: In this article, Waterlow's English, warm, ruddy quality is hardly mentioned, but think of some of her pictures of country life, the breadth, the sense of sun lying on long barns, great warm kitchens at twilight when the men came home from the fields, the feeling of beasts horses and cows.
Abstract: I dont [sic] think S. W. [Sydney Waterlow] brought it off with George Eliot. He never gets under way. The cartwheels want oiling. I think, too, he is ungenerous. She was a deal more than that. Her English, warm, ruddy quality is hardly mentioned. . . . But think of some of her pictures of country life—the breadth—the sense of sun lying on long barns—great warm kitchens at twilight when the men came home from the fields—the feeling of beasts horses and cows—the peculiar passion she has for horses (when Maggie Tullivers [sic] lover walks with her up & down the lane & asks her to marry, he leads his great red horse and the beast is foaming—it has been hard ridden and there are dark streaks of sweat on its flanks—the beast is the man one feels SHE feels in some queer inarticulate way)—Oh, I think he ought really to have been more generous. (118)
TL;DR: The authors investigates the significance of the absent category of Japanophone literature in light of the recent rise of a global discourse on Sinophone literature and other post-colonial critical genealogies.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay inquires into the significance of the absent category of Japanophone literature in light of the recent rise of a global discourse on Sinophone literature and other postcolonial critical genealogies. This discussion of broader postcolonial taxonomies sets the stage for an investigation into the position of Japan as a minor empire in relation to its European counterparts. The precarious location among divided literary fields of colonial Korean writers, such as Kim Saryang, provides a segue into linking contested postcolonial and cold war legacies in the Asia-Pacific.
TL;DR: Anthropocene Fictions as mentioned in this paper discusses the need to theorize and expand what I call the anthropocene Dossier, and explores Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer's first article about the Anthropocene, the global scenarios of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the concept of planetary boundaries as developed by scientists working at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Abstract: Abstract:This introduction to the “Anthropocene Fictions” special issue of MFS discusses the need to theorize and expand what I call the “Anthropocene Dossier.” In addition to summarizing the essays of this issue, I explore Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer’s first article about the Anthropocene, the global scenarios of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the concept of planetary boundaries as developed by scientists working at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. I juxtapose these scientific works with recent Anthropocene research undertaken by scholars working in the humanities, notably Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty.
TL;DR: This essay argues that Lawrence's tropes of wireless connection reflect his pursuit of a politics of non-sovereignty in the second half of his career.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay argues that Lawrence's tropes of wireless connection reflect his pursuit of a politics of non-sovereignty in the second half of his career. Frequently overshadowed by violent claims to sovereignty or by the celebration of the immediacy of touch, wireless connections stand for a minor utopianism of affective receptivity. Countering the hegemony of broadcasting as well as the sovereign claims of his own supposed leader characters, Lawrence conceived of the novel as a wireless medium in its own right, attuned to affective energies that can enable an impersonal intimacy among dispersed individuals and their nonhuman environment.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make operational the category of inter-imperiality and tackle the phenomena of placedness, translatability, and the futurity of artwork, using the multi-ethnic history of the Belgrade district called Dorcol and four modernist artworks from the region.
Abstract: This article reflects on the challenges posed to literary studies by cases of inter-imperial positionality: their repercussions on our understanding of lived temporalities, the strategies we use to translate this understanding into art and fiction, and the critical tools we deploy to evaluate thus produced artworks. To assist in these ruminations I make operational the category of inter-imperiality and tackle the phenomena of placedness, translatability, and the futurity of artwork. My guides are the multi-ethnic history of the Belgrade district called Dorcol and four modernist artworks from the region: the Yugoslav surrealists’ piece of engagement art "Facing a Wall: A Simulation of the Paranoiac Delirium of Interpretation. Survey" ("Pred jednim zidom: Simulacija paranojackog delirijuma interpretacije. Anketa, 1932"); two 1935 photographs by Vane Bor; and Marko Ristic’s 1928 anti-novel Without a Measure (Bez mere, 1928).
TL;DR: This article argued that Lawrence's tropes of wireless connection reflect his pursuit of a politics of non-sovereignty in the second half of his career, and that wireless connections stand for a minor utopianism of affective receptivity, attuned to affective energies that can enable an impersonal intimacy among dispersed individuals and their nonhuman environment.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay argues that Lawrence's tropes of wireless connection reflect his pursuit of a politics of non-sovereignty in the second half of his career. Frequently overshadowed by violent claims to sovereignty or by the celebration of the immediacy of touch, wireless connections stand for a minor utopianism of affective receptivity. Countering the hegemony of broadcasting as well as the sovereign claims of his own supposed leader characters, Lawrence conceived of the novel as a wireless medium in its own right, attuned to affective energies that can enable an impersonal intimacy among dispersed individuals and their nonhuman environment.
TL;DR: The authors used an inter-imperial framework to evaluate neoliberalism as a variant among several capitalist practices, highlighting the ways in which the ruins of language and infrastructures continue to inscribe the present tense.
Abstract: Abstract:Neoliberal discourses of globalization frequently emphasise a temporal break in history, a paradigm shift at once irreversible and comprehensible only on its own terms. This essay, conversely, uses an inter-imperial framework to evaluate neoliberalism as a variant among several capitalist practices. Bringing together Wang Gang’s novel English (2004) and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), it highlights the ways in which the ruins of language and infrastructures continue to inscribe the present tense. It also shows how the Silk Road, a nineteenth-century colonial construct, encapsulates China’s dreams of global trade and prosperity in a neoliberal era.
TL;DR: This paper argued that Du Bois' Dark Princess is a key text for theorizing the connections between the emergent field of the Global Anglophone and earlier articulations of an inter-imperial English-speaking world that mediated relations among anti-colonial writers and activists as well as imperialists.
Abstract: Abstract:In W. E. B. Du Bois’ Dark Princess (1928) Anglophone legibility simultaneously limits and extends coalitions between racialized subjects from different empires. Drawing on the concept of inter-imperiality, this essay argues that this novel is a key text for theorizing the connections between the emergent field of the Global Anglophone and earlier articulations of an inter-imperial English-speaking world that mediated relations among anti-colonial writers and activists as well as imperialists.
TL;DR: The Mid-Autumn story as discussed by the authors describes an intimate moment between a Vietnamese mother and her unborn child in the early stages of the Vietnam War, when the mother is still adjusting to life in the thick humidity of southern Louisiana and attempting to learn English.
Abstract: Robert Olen Butler’s story “Mid-Autumn” opens with a striking description of an intimate moment between a Vietnamese mother and her unborn child. The mother is married to an American veteran of the Vietnam War, although she still mourns the wartime death—possibly at the hands of American soldiers—of her former Vietnamese lover. When the story begins, she is still adjusting to life in the thick humidity of southern Louisiana and attempting to learn English. The mother speaks to her child, fathered by the American veteran, in her native tongue of Vietnamese. Butler, however, renders the exchange in English:
TL;DR: This article explored the consequences of the coal nostalgia evoked in representations of coal mining communities, and proposed a more nuanced approach to the affective dimensions of coal nostalgia from scholars of the Anthropocene.
Abstract: Abstract:This essay juxtaposes works about East Kentucky coal communities by Elmore Leonard and bell hooks to consider what “coal identity politics” might be in the Anthropocene. The election of Donald Trump enabled new performances of white supremacy, in part through his appeal to coal nostalgia. At the same time, his environmental policies pose a threat to that little progress achieved by the Paris Accord. This entanglement demands a more nuanced approach to the affective dimensions of nostalgia from scholars of the Anthropocene. This essay explores the consequences of the nostalgia evoked in representations of coal mining communities.