The Postethnic Literary: Reading Paratexts and Transpositions around 2000

Florian Sedlmeier

Published by De Gruyter 2014

The Postethnic Literary

Reading Paratexts and Transpositions around 2000

Florian Sedlmeier

Volume 48 in the series Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368482

Overview
Contents

About this book

The book explores the discursive and theoretical conditions for conceptualizing the postethnic literary. It historicizes US multicultural and postcolonial studies as institutionalized discursive formations, which constitute a paratext that regulates the reception of literary texts according to the paradigm of representativeness. Rather than following that paradigm, the study offers an alternative framework by rereading contemporary literary texts for their investment in literary form. By means of self-reflective intermedial transpositions, the writings of Sherman Alexie, Chang-rae Lee, and Jamaica Kincaid insist upon a differentiation between the representation of cultural sign systems or subject positions and the dramatization of individual gestures of authorship. As such, they form a postethnic literary constellation, further probed in the epilogue of the study focused on Dave Eggers.

Author / Editor information

Florian Sedlmeier, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Preface: Read, Again Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	V
Acknowledgements Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	XIV
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	XV
Introduction: Paratexts, Transpositions, and Postethnic Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Breaching the Autobiographical Pact: Sherman Alexie and the Ethics of Reading for Form Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
2. Copies, Lists, and Reading Publics in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
3. Exhaustion, Abstraction, and the Longing for Postethnic Literary Presence in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Coda. The How is the What: Constellations of the Postethnic Literary This study has explored the epistemological conditions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars (American Studies, British Studies, Comparative Literary Studies), Libraries
Pages
- Front matter: 16
- Main content: 226
Keywords: Contemporary Literature; Postcolonialism; Authorship

eBook

Published: December 11, 2014
ISBN: 9783110368482

Hardcover

Published: October 27, 2014
ISBN: 9783110373707