Ex-Centric Writing: Essays on Madness in Postcolonial Fiction (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi and Korean Edition)

The concern with identity and belonging, with place/dis-placement is a major feature of postcolonial literature and the theme of alienation cannot but be 'topical' in the literatures of the countries that have experienced the cultural shock and bereavement, and the physical and psychic trauma of colonial invasion. The vocation of this volume is to qualify the difference one is faced with when a postcolonial ex-centric text is addressed by collecting essays concerned with writers from Southern Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and Asian diaspora(s). While giving contextual specifics their due, it shows how the theme of alienation, when perceived through the anamorphic lens of madness, is magnified and charged with an excruciatingly questioning and destabilizing power, laying bare political as well as existential and moral urges. From the ex-centric, broadly exilic position it is the ideology and practice of colonialism that demand to be rubricated under the sign of psychopathology. More broadly, as these essays highlight, in fiction the mad character's ex-centric vision is a continuous warning against the temptation to believe in those discourses that pass themselves off as reflecting the given, 'natural', order of things. The concern with identity and belonging, with place/dis-placement is a major feature of postcolonial literature and the theme of alienation cannot but be “topical” in the literatures of the countries that have experienced the cultural shock and bereavement, and the physical and psychic trauma of colonial invasion. The purpose of this volume is to qualify the difference one is faced with when a postcolonial ex-centric text is addressed, by collecting essays concerned with writers from Southern Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and Asian diaspora(s). While giving contextual specifics their due, it shows how the theme of alienation, when perceived through the anamorphic lens of madness, is magnified and charged with an excruciatingly questioning and destabilizing power, laying bare political as well as existential and moral urges. From the ex-centric, broadly exilic position, it is the ideology and practice of colonialism that demand to be rubricated as psychopathology. More broadly, as these essays highlight, in fiction the mad character's ex-centric vision is a continuous warning against the temptation to believe in those discourses that pass themselves off as reflecting the given, “natural”, order of things. CONTENTS 5 INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER ONE 31 CHAPTER TWO 49 CHAPTER THREE 65 CHAPTER FOUR 91 CHAPTER FIVE 101 CHAPTER SIX 125 CHAPTER SEVEN 141 CHAPTER EIGHT 159 CHAPTER NINE 183 CONTRIBUTORS 205 Edited By Susanna Zinato And Annalisa Pes. Includes Bibliographical References.