John C. Hawley

These thirteen essays address possible ramifications arising from the globalization of western notions of gay and lesbian identities. Examining postcolonial literature, economics, and psychology from a "queer" perspective leads to self-reflexive consideration of the canonization of postcolonial studies and queer theory in western academe.

Theoretical Intersections

Postcolonial, Queer

The sixteen original essays by scholars from around the world examine concerns common to writers who experience marginalization based upon their inescapable identification with two or more cultures. From Australian aboriginal and Maori, to Irish, Maghrebian, and South African, and on to the rich ethnic mix in North America, the book considers fiction, poetry, autobiography, and anthropological reportage to raise questions as determinative as one's choice of language, one's presentation of self in society, one's "recovery" of a history. This collection serves as a bridge between recent Eurocentric postmodern discourse dealing with the breakdown of the modernist stability in art, architecture, and electronic media, and those recent studies that problematize the issue of racial identity and literary practice. Cross-Addressing discusses site-specific strategies of resistance to the imposition of identity in the terms imposed or implied by colonizers and their descendants: narrative empowerment, gender reconstruction, racial decategorization, an intersection of marginalities, and a cross-cultural Third World solidarity. The movement is from the individual to the collective, from the particular to the global. The theoretical approach is eclectic, echoing the current split in cultural studies between discussions of the cultural production of meaning, and an involvement in policy debates. The book contends that the heightened consciousness resulting from marginalization not only judges our world, but offers it a window onto its future possibilities. Contributors include Lyn McCredden, Suzette Henke, Trevor James, Mary O'Connor, S.M., Nejd Yaziji, Rosemary Jolly, Bernice Zamora, Gayle Wald, Arturo Aldama, Manuel M. Martín-Rodríquez, Barbara Frey Waxman, Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Lien Chao, Karin Quimby, and Roger Bromley.

Resistance Literature and Cultural Borders

Cross-Addressing

Dennis Altman

Uses postcolonial theory to critique the globalization of gay culture.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems – both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Dialectics of the Word in Western Christianity since Luther

Reform and Counterreform

The fourteen essays in this volume contribute significantly to a consideration of the interplay between nation and narration that currently dominates both literary and cultural studies. With the fervent reassertion of tribal domains throughout the world, and with the consequent threat to the stability of a common discourse in putative countries once mapped and subsequently dominated by colonizing powers, the need for such studies becomes increasingly obvious. Whose idea of a nation is to prevail throughout these postcolonial territories; whose claims to speak for a people are to be legitimized by international agreement; amid the demands of patriotic rhetoric, what role may be allowed for individual expression that attempts to transcend the immediate political agenda; who may assume positions of authority in defining an ethnic paradigm — such are the questions variously addressed in this volume.The essayists who here contribute to the discussion are students of the various national literatures that are now becoming more generally available in the West. The range of topics is broad — moving globally from the Caribbean and South America, through the African continent, and on to the Indian subcontinent, and moving temporally through the nineteenth century and into the closing days of our twentieth. We deal with poetry, fiction, and theoretical writings, and have two types of reader in mind: We hope to introduce the uninitiated to the breadth of this expanding field, and we hope to aid those with a specialized knowledge of one or other of these literatures in their consideration of the extent to which post-colonial writing may or may not form a reasonably unified field. We seek to avoid the new form of colonialism that might impose a theoretical template to these quite divergent writings, falsely rendering it all accessible and familiar. At the same time, we do note questions and concerns that cross borders, whether these imagined lines are spatial, temporal, gendered or racial.

Self and Country in the Post-colonial Imagination

Writing the Nation

Suitable for the classroom but completely accessible to the general reader, this volume presents many of the most interesting authors writing today from an Islamic background—Kamel Daoud, Yasmine el Rashidi, Hisham Matar, Tahar Djaout, Mohsin Hamid, Hanif Kureishi, Edward Said, Driss Chaibi, Kamila Shamsie, Tahar ben Jelloun, Leila Aboulela, Abdellah Taïa, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Hisham Matar, Eboo Patel, Reza Aslan, and Tamim Ansary, among others—who embody the various strains of Islamic interpretation and conflict. This study discusses an ongoing Reformation in Islam, focusing on the Arab Spring, the role of women and sexuality, the “clash of civilizations,” assimilation and cosmopolitanism, jihad, pluralism across cultures, free speech and apostasy. In an atmosphere of political and religious awakening, these authors search for a voice for individual rights while nations seek to restore a “disrupted destiny.” Questions of “de-Arabization” of the religion, ecumenicism, comparative modernities, and the role of literature thread themselves throughout the chapters of the book.

Jihad, Revolution, Subjectivity

Islam in Contemporary Literature

John Charles Hawley

Contemporary Indian Writers in English (CIWE) is a series that presents critical commentaries on some of the best-known names in the genre. With the high visibilty of Indian writing in English in academic, critical, pedagogic and reader circles, there is a perceivable demand for lucid yet rigorous introduction of several of its authors and genres. The CIWE texts cater to a wide audience - from the student seeking information and critical material on particular works to the general, informed reader who might want to know a little more about an author she has just finished reading. Cast in a user-friendly format, and written with a high degree of critical and theoretical rigour, the texts in the series will provide astute, accessible, informed entry-points into a wide range of works and writers. CIWE, we hope, will further strengthen the interest in and readership of one of the most significant components of world literatures in English. Amitav Ghosh, a novelist with an extraordinary sense of history and place, is indisputably one of the most important novelists and essayists of our times. In this volume, John Hawley provides a lucid, friendly and thoriough introduction to the fiction and essays of Ghosh.

An Introduction

Amitav Ghosh

Hundreds of alphabetically arranged biographical and topical entries survey the current state of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer American culture.

John C. Hawley

Books

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