The Postethnic Literary: Reading Paratexts and Transpositions around 2000

ISBN-13: 9783110373707 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 242 str.

Florian Sedlmeier

Opis

The book explores the discursive and theoretical conditions for conceptualizing the postethnic literary. It historicizes US multicultural and postcolonial studies as institutionalized discursive formations, which constitute a paratext that regulates the reception of literary texts according to the paradigm of representativeness. Rather than following that paradigm, the study offers an alternative framework by rereading contemporary literary texts for their investment in literary form. By means of self-reflective intermedial transpositions, the writings of Sherman Alexie, Chang-rae Lee, and Jamaica Kincaid insist upon a differentiation between the representation of cultural sign systems or subject positions and the dramatization of individual gestures of authorship. As such, they form a postethnic literary constellation, further probed in the epilogue of the study focused on Dave Eggers.

What are the discursive and theoretical conditions for conceptualizing the notion of the postethnic literary? The book suggests an answer to this question by reading contemporary literary texts commonly classified as multicultural or postcolonial for their investment in literary form and for their dramatizations of individual gestures of authorship.

O autorze

Florian Sedlmeier, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.