Re/membering Place

The book explores the issue of «Re/membering place» as a process of reconstruction, of re-appropriation of the past, reshaping of identity in a colonial and postcolonial context of displacement, loss, and alienation in fiction and the arts in English-speaking countries.

This book is a collection of essays from the conference «Re/membering Place», held at Stendhal University from 13 to 15 October 2011. It explores the issue of «Re/membering Place» in a colonial and postcolonial context of displacement, loss, and alienation. The authors consider «re/membering» as a process of reconstruction which entails the recreation of memory, be it individual or collective, the re-appropriation of the past and of collective myths, the reshaping of identity, and their representation in literature and the arts. They tackle various forms of story-telling in fiction, autobiography, the travel narrative, the memoir, historiography as well as cinema. Further, they analyse how memory and personal testimonies serve to fill in the blanks of historical discourse, to give voice to a forgotten community, revisit historiography and question the canon of Western culture. Through the exploration of richly diverse geographies and cultures throughout the world, from the Indian subcontinent to the Atlantic landscapes of Canada and the Caribbean, and the open spaces of Africa and Australia, this collection of essays introduces the reader to the crucial identity issues and problems raised in narratives today.

Autorentext

Catherine Delmas is a professor of English and Commonwealth literature at Stendhal University (Grenoble III) and the Director of CEMRA EA 3016 (the Research Unit on Modes of Representation in English Studies). André Dodeman is a senior lecturer in Anglophone literature at Stendhal University (Grenoble III) in the Foreign Languages department.

Zusammenfassung
«In this volume, the two editors, Catherine Delmas and André Dodeman, have brought together conceptually rich contributions to the field of postcolonial and diasporic studies. The strong theoretical positioning as well as the perceptive and detailed analyses make the volume a genuine contribution to the field and the variety of topics as well as approaches [and] provides substantial coverage of the main analytical tools.» (Françoise Král, Commonwealth Essays and Studies 36, 2013/1)

Inhalt

Contents: John Thieme: After the Bounty: Botany and Botanical Tropes in Caribbean Writing - Nathalie Martinière: Coming Home in David Dabydeen's Disappearance - Christine Lorre-Johnston: Remembering and Forgetting: Imagining Home in Alice Munro's The View from Castle Rock - Anne-Florence Quaireau: Dislocation, Remembering, Reforming in Anna Jameson's Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838) - Anne LeGuellec-Minel: Re-membering the Past: Phallic Agency Reclaimed in Kim Scott's Benang - Jocelyn Martin: Re/membering Nation and Identity in Merlinda Bobis' 'Fish-Hair Woman' - Catherine Pesso-Miquel: Remembering Biafra: Aesthetics and Politics of Secession in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun - Birgit Neumann: 'The Sea is History': Transcultural Remembrance of the Black Atlantic - Sheila Collingwood-Whittick: Disremembering the Colonial Past, Appropriating Indigenous Attachment to Place: Problems of Memory and Identity in Settler Australia - Christine Vandamme: The Empire Harks Back: Memorial and Cultural Dis-Placement as Ethical Gesture in David Malouf's The Conversations at Curlow Creek - Elodie Raimbault: Kipling's Anglo-Indians and the Displacement of Englishness: What should they Know of England who Only India Know? - Suhasini Vincent: Intertwining Hi(stories) and East/West Displacement in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss - Biljana Djoric-Francuski: The Westernized East Meets the Easternized West in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Three Continents - Chitra Krishnan: The India of Cabbages and Kings: a Panoramic View of the Image of India in the Literatures of Displacement - Claire Omhovère: The Memory of Landscape: Canadian Explorations on Site - Gilles Teulié: Collective Memory & National Identity in South Africa: Re-Membering King Shaka & the Zulu Military Past - Robert Kusek: Africa in the Guise. (Mis/Re)placement in The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee - Vera Benczik: Re/membering Now: The doubling of Space in Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Narratives.