Narratives of Difference in Globalized Cultures: Reading Transnational Cultural Commodities (New Comparisons in World Literature)

This book is about how the marketing of transnational cultural commodities capitalizes on difference and its appeal for cosmopolitan consumers in our postmodern globalized world. At what price? What ethical and political conundrums does the artist/writer/reader confront when going global? This volume analyzes why difference - whether gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, or linguistic - has become such a prominent element in the contemporary cultural field, and the effects of this prevalence on the production, circulation and reception of cultural commodities in the context of globalization. At the intersection of globalization, diaspora, postcolonial and feminist studies in world literature, these essays engage critically with a wide variety of representative narratives taken from diverse cultural fields, including humanitarian fiction, multilingual poetry, painting, text-image art, performance art, film, documentary, and docu-poetry. The chapters included seek to offer counter-readings that disrupt hegemonic representations of cultural identity within the contemporary, neoliberal and globalized landscape Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi Introduction: Interrogating the Production, Circulation and Reception of ‘Difference’ in Globalized Cultures (Belén Martín-Lucas, Andrea Ruthven)....Pages 1-9 Front Matter ....Pages 11-11 Subversive Translation and Lexical Empathy: Pedagogies of Cortesia and Transnational Multilingual Poetics (Merlinda Bobis)....Pages 13-35 The Production and Productivity of Humanitarian Fiction: Postcolonial Shame and Neocolonial Crises (David Callahan)....Pages 37-56 Still Devouring Frida Kahlo: Psychobiography versus Postcolonial and Disability Readings (Zoë Brigley Thompson)....Pages 57-80 The World Republic of Readers (James Procter)....Pages 81-93 Front Matter ....Pages 95-95 Success and the City: Working in the World’s Capital in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (Darragh Patrick Hall)....Pages 97-115 Borderless (Alien) Nations: Disposable Bodies and Biopolitical Effacement in Min Sook Lee’s Docu-Poem (Libe García Zarranz)....Pages 117-132 Public Art in the Production of a Global City: Jamie Hilder’s Clashing Versions of Vancouver (John Havelda)....Pages 133-155 A Nation Goes Adrift: Subaltern Inter-Identity in José Saramago’s The Stone Raft (Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia)....Pages 157-181 Front Matter ....Pages 183-183 ‘Something Terrible Happened’: Spectacles of Gendered Violence and Nadine Gordimer’s The House Gun (Sorcha Gunne)....Pages 185-202 Alternative Modernities and Othered Masculinities in Mira Nair’s The Namesake (E. Guillermo Iglesias Díaz)....Pages 203-222 (Un)Veiling Women’s Bodies: Transnational Feminisms in Emer Martin’s Baby Zero (Aida Rosende-Pérez)....Pages 223-244 Back Matter ....Pages 245-251 Annotation About how the marketing of transnational cultural commodities capitalizes on difference and its appeal for cosmopolitan consumers in our postmodern globalized world. At what price? What ethical and political conundrums does the artist/writer/reader confront when going global? This volume analyzes why difference - whether gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, or linguistic - has become such a prominent element in the contemporary cultural field, and the effects of this prevalence on the production, circulation and reception of cultural commodities in the context of globalization Belén Martín-lucas, Andrea Ruthven, Editors. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.