| Description |
1 online resource |
| Series |
Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; 65 |
| Contents |
Cover; Half Title; Series Page; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: Community "Beyond the Borders"; Anachronous Liminality and the Question of Agency; Reconsidering Community in Contemporary Postcolonial Novels; Caring for Community: Towards a Non-Reciprocal Responsibility; 1 Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient: From a Crumbling Villa to a Porous Community; From the (Marginal) Desert to (Liminal) Tuscany; Literary Mediation, Spectral Intervention and a Triad of Care 40; A Metonymic Community and Its Porous Ties 48 |
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2 "Building the New"? Untimely Community in Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted VigilLiminality, Care and a "Fellowship of Wounds"; Considering Ties and Facing Reciprocity 66; Thwarted Hospitality and the Spectral Third; 3 Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog: From Unwanted History to Unconditional Hospitality; Impossible Communities in Urban Space; History, Heritage and the Spectral in a 'Postcolonial' City; Braving the Bush: From a Lost Dog to a New Community; 4 Spectral Agency and the Ghostly Self: Towards an Unconditional Community in Wendy Law-Yone's The Road to Wanting |
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Braving Burma: Minority Politics and the Politics of Community 115From the Ghostly to the Spectral: Community and the Road to Wanting; Spectrality and the Rite of Passage: Forging a New Approach to Community; 5 Rethinking Community and Its Borders in Contemporary Postcolonial Literatures; Responsibility as Indulgence; Race, Class and the Privilege of Responsibility; On Ethics and Aesthetics in Postcolonial Literatures; Works Cited; Index |
| Summary |
Caring for Community: Towards a New Ethics of Responsibility in Contemporary Postcolonial Novels focuses on four highly acclaimed publications in order to argue for a new understanding of community and its ethical framework in recent literary texts. Traditionally, community has been understood to function on the basis of individuals' readiness to establish relationships of reciprocal responsibility. This book, however, argues that community and non-reciprocity need not be mutually exclusive categories. Examining works by leading contemporary postcolonial authors and reading them against Judith Butler's post-9/11 concept of global political community, the book explores how concrete acts of responsibility can be carried out in recognition of various others, even and precisely when those others cannot be expected to respond. The literary analyses draw on a rich theoretical framework that includes approaches to care, hospitality and the ethical encounter between self and other. Overall, this book establishes that the novels' protagonists, by investing in an ethics of responsibility that does not require reciprocity, acquire the agency to envisage new forms of community. By reflecting on the nature and effect of this agency and its representation in contemporary literary texts, the book also considers the role of postcolonial studies in addressing highly topical questions regarding our co-existence with others |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Introduction<BR>Chapter 1. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient: From a Crumbling Villa to a Porous Community<BR>Chapter 2. "Building the New"? Un-Timely Community in Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil<BR>Chapter 3. Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog: From Unwanted History to Unconditional Hospitality<BR>Chapter 4. Spectral Agency and the Ghostly Self: Towards an Unconditional Community in Wendy Law-Yone's The Road to Wanting<BR>Conclusion |
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CIP data; resource not viewed |
| Subject |
English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
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Communities in literature.
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Responsibility in literature.
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Commonwealth fiction (English) -- History and criticism
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Community life in literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Comparative Literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Subjects & Themes -- Politics.
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Aesthetics.
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Australia.
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Borders.
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Burma.
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Contemporary Postcolonial Novels.
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Ethics.
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Hospitality.
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Judith Butler.
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Michelle de Kretser.
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Minority.
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Nadeem Aslam.
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Ondaatje.
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Politics.
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Postcolonial City.
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postcolonial literature.
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post 9/11 literature.
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reciprocity.
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The English Patient.
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The Lost Dog.
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The Road to Wanting.
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The Wasted Vigil.
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Urban Space.
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Wendy Law-Yone.
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Community life in literature.
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Commonwealth fiction (English)
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Communities in literature.
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English fiction.
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Responsibility in literature.
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780429884856 |
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0429884850 |
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9780429884863 |
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0429884869 |
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9780429884849 |
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0429884842 |
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9780429026539 |
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0429026536 |
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