Reinventing Community: Identity and Difference in Late Twentieth-Century Philosophy and Literature in French

ISBN-13: 9781904713029 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 238 str.

Jane Hiddleston

Opis

During recent years critics have increasingly expressed their loss of faith in existing cultural and political collective frameworks, drawing attention instead to irreducible singularity and to radical incommensurability between diverse positions or groups. Hiddleston analyses and challenges this trend, bringing together political, theoretical and literary analysis and juxtaposing the works of critical theorists such as Derrida, Lyotard and Nancy with literature by writers of North African immigrant origin. She presents a critique of those writers who underline the absence of communal identification, proposes a new emphasis on relational networks interconnecting diverse cultural groups, and argues for a more subtle understanding of the complex interplay of the singular and the collective in contemporary French writing.

Spis treści

Introduction; 1: The Deconstruction of Community; 2: Communities of Difference; 3: The Identity of the French Language and the Language of French Identity; 4: Cultural Oppositions in 'First-Generation' Immigrant Literature; 5: Leïla Sebbar between Exile and Polyphony; 6: Resistance and Subversion in 'Beur' Literature; Conclusion

O autorze

Jane Hiddlestone