˜Theœ politics of literature in a divided 21st Century

"How does literature matter politically in the 21st century? This book offers an ecocritical framework for exploring the significance of literature today. Featuring a diverse body of texts and authors, it develops a future-oriented politics embedded in those transgressive realities which our political system finds impossible to tame. This book re-imagines political agency, voices, bodies and borders as transformative processes rather than rigid realities, articulating a 'dia-topian' literary politics. Taking a contextual approach, it addresses such urgent global issues as biopolitics, migration and borders, populism, climate change, and terrorism. These readings revitalize fictional worlds for political enquiry, demonstrating how imaginative literature seeds change in a world of closed-off horizons. Prior to the pragmatics of power-play, literary language breathes new energy into the frames of our thought and the shapes of our affects. This book shows how relation, metamorphosis and enmeshment can become salient in a politics beyond the conflict line."-- Provided by publisher Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Introduction Towards a Diatopian Politics of Literature 1 Unmappable Gestures: Politics of Literature in the Age of Donald Trump Gestural Selfhood: From Addressability to Response-ability Writing From the Ruins: Politics of Literary Form Rhizomatic Space: De-territorializing the Nation From Stratifying Systems to Writ(h)ing Vipers: Literary Politics in Populist Times 2 Uncontainable Bodies: Posthuman Biopolitics Cyberpunk Breakdowns Beginning Breakthroughs: Schizo-Analysing the Posthuman Bodies Beyond Control: Transcorporeal Cyborg Feminism Conclusion: Cells Interlinked 3 Transversing the Event: Beyond the Trauma of Terrorism Transnational Scars: Uncontainable Bodies From Traumatic Certainties to Virtual Possibilities Gyres of Time: Subverting the Logic of Pre-emption Conclusion: A Politics of Wounded Relation 4 Emergence, Submergence, Insurgence: Politics on Liquid Ground Literature – Ecology – Politics: Unravelling the Knot Voices Unbound Immersed Agencies Along Thresholds of Sustainability Monstrous Freedom Watery Politics as Queering? 5 Unravelling the Nation State: Openwork Lives in Migrant Graphic Narratives Weaving as Diatopian Metaphor Unfixability: Migrant Graphic Narratives “We are the granddaughters of the witches that you could not burn”: Embroidery as Rhizomatically Rooted Feminism Woven Voices: Intertextual Patterns of Disorientation Weaving Tails: Fantastical Migrations Through Folded Space Conclusion: Processual Space, Relational Politics Index