Transcending The Postmodern: The Singular Response Of Literature To The Transmodern Paradigm 47

Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm gathers an introduction and ten chapters concerned with the issue of Transmodernity as addressed by and presented in contemporary novels hailing from various parts of the English-speaking world. Building on the theories of Transmodernity propounded by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, Enrique Dussel, Marc Luyckx Ghisi and Irena Ateljevic, __inter alia__, it investigates the links between Transmodernity and such categories as Postmodernity, Postcolonialism and Transculturalism with a view to help define a new current in contemporary literary production. The chapters either follow the main theoretical drives of the transmodern paradigm or problematise them. In so doing, they branch out towards various issues that have come to inspire contemporary novelists, among which: the presence of the past, the ascendance of new technologies, multiculturalism, terrorism, and also vulnerability, interdependence, solidarity and ecology in a globalised context. In so doing, it interrogates the ethics, aesthetics and politics of the contemporary novel in English. This book concerned with the issue of Transmodernity as addressed by and presented in contemporary novels hailing from various parts of the English-speaking world. Cover 1 Half Title 4 Series Page 5 Title Page 6 Copyright Page 7 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction: Transcending the Postmodern 12 Part I: The Poetics of Transmodernity 32 1 The Transmodern Poetics of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: Generic Hybridity, Narrative Embedding and Transindividuality 34 2 Transnational Latino/a Literature and the Transmodern Meta-narrative: An Alternative Reading of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 60 3 The Novel of Ideas at the Crossroads of Transmodernity: Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island 79 Part II: Ethical Perceptions 100 4 Problematising the Transmodern: Jon McGregor’s Ethics of Consideration 102 5 Using Transculturalism to Understand the Transmodern Paradigm: Representations of Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah 120 6 Transmodern Mythopoesis in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant 144 Part III: Migrancy and the Possibility of Reenchantment 166 7 A Transmodern Approach to Post-9/11 Australia: Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist as a Narrative of the Limit 168 8 Diversity, Singularity, Reenchantment and Relationality in a Transmodern World: Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 188 Part IV: Perspectives on Biopolitics 204 9 Transcorporeality, Fluidity and Transanimality in Monique Roffey’s Novel Archipelago 206 10 A Transmodern Approach to Biology in Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman 224 Contributor Biographies 242 Index 248 Transmodernity;,Generic,Hybridity;,Transnationalism;,Instantaneity;,Transmodern,Mythopoesis;,Biopolitics Transmodernity,Generic Hybridity,Transnationalism,Instantaneity,Transmodern Mythopoesis,Biopolitics This book builds on theories of Transmodernity by Rodriguez Magda, Dussel, Luyckx Ghisi and Ateljevic, inter alia. It investigates their links with Postmodernity, Postcolonialism or Transculturalism.