ENGLISH

Decolonising Gender: Literature, Enlightenment and the Feminine Real (Decolonizing Gender: Literature and a Poetics of the Real)

By Caroline Rooney

Book information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2007
ISBN
0415424186, 9780415424189, 9780203933596
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (1756894 bytes)
Series
Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures
Edition
1
Pages
264\259
Topic
Literature Literary
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

Through examination of the functions of language and cross-cultural readings of literature – from African queer reading to postcolonial Shakespeare – Rooney explores the nature of the real, providing: a way out of some of the current deadlocks of feminist theory an anti-essentialist approach to gender in which both male and female readers may address a consciousness of the feminine a platform for postcolonial and postmodernist thinkers to engage in a dialogue around the status of the performative in regard to the other a new theory of poetic realism in both canonical and postcolonial literatures a re-reading of the Enlightenment legacy in terms of postcolonial liberation theory a comparison of contemporary debates on the real across the humanities and the sciences. Exploring current ideas of performativity in literature and language, and negotiating a path between feminist theory’s common pitfalls of essentialism and constructivism, Caroline Rooney argues convincingly that by rethinking our understanding of gender we might also equip ourselves to resist racism and totalitarianism more effectively.

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