Postcolonial Realism and the Concept of the Political

Description

As the scholarly world attunes itself once again to the specifically political, this book rethinks the political significance of literary realism within a postcolonial context. Generally, postcolonial studies has either ignored realism or criticized it as being naïve, anachronistic, deceptive, or complicit with colonial discourse; in other words―incongruous with the postcolonial. This book argues that postcolonial realism is intimately connected to the specifically political in the sense that realist form is premised on the idea of a collective reality. Discussing a range of literary and theoretical works, Dr. Sorensen exemplifies that many postcolonial writers were often faced with the realities of an unstable state, a divided community inhabiting a contested social space, the challenges of constructing a notion of ‘the people,’ often out of a myriad of local communities with different traditions and languages brought together arbitrarily through colonization. The book demonstrates that the political context of realism is the sphere or possibility of civil war, divided societies, and unstable communities. Postcolonial realism is prompted by disturbing political circumstances, and it gestures toward a commonly imagined world, precisely because such a notion is under pressure or absent. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Postcolonial Studies and the End of History Introduction Literature and History Poly-Cultural Writing Postcolonial Studies and the Question of Representation Theoretical-Critical Fictions The Return to Literary Realism Notes Works Cited 1. Nation, Nationalism, and the Novel Form The Critique of Nationalism Imagined Community vs. DissemiNation Anderson's Nation The Novel and the Nation Notes Works Cited 2. The Historico-Political Discourse Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political Michel Foucault's Society Must Be Defended The Historico-Political Discourse Foucault's Hobbes Boulainvilliers and the Birth of the Nation The French Revolution: The Birth of a Nation Lukacs's Historico-Political Discourse Necessary Anachronism and '1848' Notes Works Cited 3. The Political Significance of Literary Realism Introduction The Rise of Realism The Novel as a Form of Secondariness Realism and Transparency The Lure of Realism Performative Realism Realism as Historico-Political Discourse Realist Omniscience The Monopolization of Reality Notes Works Cited 4. Postcolonial Realism Jus Publicum Europaeum Postcolonial Realism Commonality vs. Singularity 'Living Reality' and the Question of the Nation Lukács's Critique of Modernism Jameson's National Allegory Conclusion Notes Works Cited 5. The Politics of Realism: Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey Introduction Not Enough or Too Much Realism The Public vs. the Private Ironic Distance Narrative and Rhetoric Improbable Connections Conclusion Notes Works Cited Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index