JOSEPH, CLARA A.B. and Janet WILSON (eds), Global Fissures. Postcolonial Fusions, Amsterdam/New York, Rodopi (Cross/cultures 85), 2006, 326 p.
The essays in this volume examine the tensions between two major political and intellectual structures: the global and the postcolonial, charting the ways in which such tensions are constitutive of changing power relations between the individual, the nation-state and global forces. Contributors ask how postcolonialism, with its emphasis on cultural difference and diversity, can respond to the new, neo-imperialist imperatives of globalization. Signalling the discursive grounds for debate is the fissures/fusions title, suggesting alternative categorizations of stereotypes like ‘global homogenization’ and ‘postcolonial resistance’. Interwoven are considerations of the intellectual or writer’s position today.
Literary texts from a wide range of countries are analysed for their resistance to global hegemony and for representations of manipulative power structures, in order to highlight issues such as environmental loss, nationality, migrancy, and marginality. Specific topics covered include ‘westernizing’ the Indian academy, ecotourism and the new media of computer technology, the corporatization of creativity in ‘re-branding’ New Zealand (including film), and the hybrid forms of Latin American photography. Writers discussed include Chinua Achebe, Samuel Beckett, Hafid Bouazza, Bei Dao, Mahmoud Darwish, Witi Ihimaera, James Joyce, Yann Martel, Rohinton Mistry, Ellen Ombre, Michael Ondaatje, George Orwell, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and Edward Said. Different essays stress the hegemony of global networks; the technological revolution’s revitalizing of niche marketing while marginalizing postcolonial resistance; the implications of the internationalization of culture for the indigene; and the potential of cultural hybridity to collapse cultural hierarchies.
Contents :
Illustrations
Introduction: Global Fissures : Postcolonial Fusions
Section 1: Theorizing the Global and the Postcolonial
John C. HAWLEY: Theorizing the Diaspora
ROBERT SPENCER: The Price of Silence: Intellectual Communication in the Age of Globalization
Shaobo XIE: Is the World Decentred? A Postcolonial Perspective on Globalization
Section 2: Globalization and Literature
Cynthia SUGARS: “World Famous Across Canada”: National Identity in the Global Village
Chitra SANKARAN: Ethics, Aesthetics and the Globalized Other in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
A. Clare BRANDABUR: The Elephant in the Living-Room: A Postcolonial Reading of Waiting for Godot
Isabel HOVING: On Invasions, Weeds, and Wilderness: The Dutch Imagination of Globalization (thrice)
C.L. INNES: Cosmopolitan Readers and Postcolonial Identities
Mustapha MARROUCHI: The Fantasy of Home
Section 3: Globalization, Politics and Culture
Vijayasree CHAGANTI & Kanukolanuk RAVICHANDRA: Macaulay to Microsoft: Globalization and the Indian Academy
Jennifer LAWN: Creativity Inc. Globalizing the Cultural Imaginary in New Zealand
Chris PRENTICE: Riding the Whale? Postcolonialism and Globalization in Whale Rider
Martin SPAUL & AMINA MINHAS: Representing Interconnection and Cultural Flow: Towards Reframing Tourist Experiences with New Media
Peter D. OSBORNE: anredoM acitpO or Aztec Cameras: Cultural Hybridity and Latin American Photography
Notes on Contributors
EDITORS: Clara A.B. Joseph specializes in postcolonial theory and literature in the Department of English at the University of Calgary.
Janet Wilson is Reader in English at the University of Northampton and editor of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.