Description
Book SynopsisGlobal Identities in Transit: The Ethics and Politics of Representation in World Literatures and Cultures explores the myriad aspects of identity formation and identity representation in an increasingly globalized world. Covering a variety of cultural and historical experiences in addition to several texts of world literatures, the contributors discuss the configurations of transnationality and transculturality in our postcolonial and globalized world. Acknowledging that nationality, ethnicity, gender, and class are continually shaped by historical processes, the contributors hone in on the ways that the increase in mobility via migration, diaspora, and exile render identities always in transit In the face of structural inequalities and social injustices predominant in this context, the chapters reflect on the moral obligations of representation. This collection will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and world literature.
Trade ReviewThis monumental book, investigating central questions about how complex, transnational, diasporic identities are shaped in the context of displacement and mobility, demonstrates how literary accounts offer guides for understanding the culturally particular in global contexts. The multidirectional gaze of the scholars and the texts discussed provides a dynamic model for understanding identity in transit. Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, many have asked, where are the voices that challenge East-West binaries? Readers will find those voices here, in a profound exploration of memory, home, and displacement.
-- Amy Schuman, The Ohio State University
Global Identities in Transit is a timely and interdisciplinary collection that invites us to rethink the formation of identity in an era of increased cultural encounters and mobility. By challenging nation-based thinking and emphasizing the plurality and polycentricity of the world, this important volume sheds much-needed light on multiple migrations, transnational narratives, and ethics of representation in ways that promote equity and challenge the legacies of nationalisms, colonialism, and dehumanization.
-- Jopi Nyman, School of Humanities, University of Eastern Finland
This is a welcome contribution to diaspora studies that sheds new light on well-known writers and introduces more recent ones.
-- Waïl S. Hassan, author of Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature
Table of ContentsForeword
Eugene Chen Eoyang
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Bouchra Benlemlih and Lahoussine Hamdoune
Part I: Identities in Transit: Self, Nation beyond ‘Imperial Globality’
Chapter One: Be-coming a Rhizome: The Contingencies of the Self in the Posthuman Age
Paul Jahshan
Chapter Two: Belonging and (Un) belonging in The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei, Memories of Peking: South Side Stories and The Lost Garden
Yu Min Claire Chen
Chapter Three: Resisting Hegemonic Discourses in Abdelhak Serhane’s Novels: Empire, Nation, and Gender
Azize Kour
Chapter Four: Identity Crisis, Retaliation and Deliberations of Women in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers
Shibani Banerjee
Part II: Across Borders and Thresholds: Identities in Diaspora Narratives
Chapter Five: The National and the Transnational: Negotiating Identity in Leila Aboulela’s Minaret
Bouchra Benlemlih
Chapter Six: Clandestine Bodies in Transit: Refugees’ Pipe Dreams in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Exit West
Lava Asaad
Chapter Seven: “Dwelling Unconnected” and Claiming Space: Diaspora Spaces in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake
Semsettin Tabur
Chapter Eight: Conflicts and Configurations in a Liminal Space: Hassouna Mosbahi’s Wadā‘an Rozalie
Boutheina Khaldi
Chapter Nine: Alien… Arab… and maybe Illegal in America: Narrating the Paradoxes of Hope, Roots, and Away
Lhoussain Simour
Chapter Ten: Towards a Transnational Turn in Zighen Aymʼs Still Moments: The diaspora’s Odyssey of ‟Floating at the Top of the Melting Pot”
Sihem Arfaoui
Part III: The Ethics And Politics of Representation
Chapter Eleven: The African on Hegel’s “Threshold of the World's History”: The Trouble of Manichean Representation in The Philosophy of History (1830)
Lahoussine Hamdoune
Chapter Twelve: A Modern Moroccan Eye on the West: Amine Elalamy’s
Un Marocain A New York
Khadija Belhiah
Chapter Thirteen: Staging the Chronicle: The Transfer and Reevaluation of Discourse: A National Identity Defined at the Crossroads
Laureano Corces
Chapter Fourteen: Writing the Refugee Experience for Middle Grade and Young Adult Readers
Tara Moore
Chapter Fifteen: When East Meets West in Victoria and Abdul
Rachid Acim
Index
About the Contributors
