Diaspora, Law and Literature (Law & Literature)

The well-known challenges of international migration have triggered new departures in academic approaches, with 'diaspora studies' evolving as an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary field of study. Its emerging methodology shares concerns with another interdisciplinary field, the study of the relations between law and literature, which focuses on the ways in which the two cultural practices of law and literature mutually negotiate each other and on the question after the ontological commensurability of the domains. This volume offers, for the first time, an attempt to provide an interface between these overlapping interdisciplinary endeavours of literary studies, legal studies, and diaspora studies. In doing so, it explores new approaches and invites new perspectives on diasporas, migration and the disciplines that study them, hopefull also adding to the cultural resources of coping with a swiftly changing social landscape in a globalizing world. Table of Contents 5 Foreword 7 Introduction: Exploring the Interface of Diaspora, Law and Literature 9 Diaspora, the West and the Law 15 Towards a Grammar of the Multiverse 31 Close Encounters of the ‘Third’ Kind 49 Fair Hearing and Fair Play in Multicultural Societies 77 Critical Subjects of Belonging 97 Theorizing Reflexivity in Literature, Law and Diaspora 121 Overlapping Sovereignties 143 The Old Armenian Lawcode of Lemberg 163 Fabian Wittreck 179 Cultural Mobility and Diaspora: The Case of Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock 195 Cultural Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go 213 Diasporic Fragments Coalescing: Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost 231 The Indian Diaspora and Laws 255 Articulations Across Diaspora, Law and Literature 281 Queer Diasporas? Literary Diaspora Studies and the Law 301 Unaccustomed Earth: Diaspora on the Developing Reel 315 Melancholic Face-Off: Caryl Phillips’ Elegy over David Oluwale 335 Contributors 357 Index of names 363 Diaspora Studies have emerged to study the changing patterns of global migration and home making. This volume offers new perspectives on this highly relevant field of research by integrating both legal and literary aspects, questions and methodologies in the study of diasporas and migration.