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Postcolonial representations : women, literature, identity / Françoise Lionnet

Author
Lionnet, Françoise
Published
Ithaca, New York : Cornell University Press, 1995.
Physical Description
1 online resource (xvi, 196 pages) : illustrations
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Contents
Logiques métisses : cultural appropriation and postcolonial representations -- Of mangoes and maroons : language, history, and the multicultural subject of Michelle Cliff's Abeng -- Evading the subject : narration and the city in Ananda Devi's Rue la poudrière -- Toward a new antillean humanism : Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove -- Inscriptions of exile : the body's knowledge and the myth of authenticity in Myriam Warner-Vieyra and Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie -- Geographies of pain : captive bodies and violent acts in Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Gayl Jones, and Bessie Head --Dissymmetry embodied : Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at point zero and the practice of excision -- The limits of universalism : identity, sexuality, and criminality -- Narrative journeys : the reconstruction of histories in Leïla Sebbar's Les carnets de Shérazade.
Summary
Passionate allegiances to competing theoretical camps have stifled dialogue among today's literary critics, asserts Françoise Lionnet. Discussing a number of postcolonial narratives by women from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, she offers a comparative feminist approach that can provide common ground for debates on such issues as multiculturalism, universalism, and relativism. Lionnet uses the concept of métissage, or cultural mixing, in her readings of a rich array of Francophone and Anglophone texts-by Michelle Cliff from Jamaica, Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie from Martinique, Ananda Devi from Mauritius, Maryse Conde and Myriam Warner-Vieyra from Guadeloupe, Gayl Jones from the United States, Bessie Head from Botswana, Nawal El Saadawi from Egypt, and Leila Sebbar from Algeria and France. Focusing on themes of exile and displacement and on narrative treatments of culturally sanctioned excision, polygamy, and murder, Lionnet examines the psychological and social mechanisms that allow individuals to negotiate conflicting cultural influences. In her view, these writers reject the opposition between self and other and base their self-portrayals on a métissage of forms and influences. Lionnet's perspective has much to offer critics and theorists, whether they are interested in First or Third World contexts, American or French critical perspectives, essentialist or poststructuralist epistemologies.
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ISBN
9781501724541 (electronic bk.)
1501724541 (electronic bk.)
0801429846
9780801429842
0801481805
9780801481802
Digital File Characteristics
data file
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 43282038