Transmodern Literatures in the 21st Century

Transmodern Literatures in the 21st Century examines the ways in which limits are being articulated, reinforced, redrawn and transgressed in contemporary literary narratives in English. They examine the generic, formal, thematic and ideological features of a variety of transmodern trends from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Transmodern Literatures in the 21st Century: Of(f) Limits offers an in-depth examination of how transmodern literatures in English over the last two decades have addressed the phenomenon of the limit. The 14 chapters that make up the volume examine how geographical, racial, ethnical, sociocultural, generical, ontological, epistemological, and other limits are articulated, transgressed, and reconfigured in recent narratives by authors writing in a wide variety of transmodern trends such as Afro- and Africanfuturism, Young Adult feminist science fiction, food fiction, air travel fiction, the networked novel, and future narratives amongst others. They thereby expose and challenge hierarchised binary dichotomies as Euro- and Anthropocentric exclusionary discursive constructs that have kept non-hegemonic voices off limits. To counter the detrimental effects of the neoliberal grand narrative of globalisation, the chapters as well as the narratives of the limit they analyse emphasise an urgent need for inclusiveness, relationality, and communality.

Autorentext

Claus-Peter Neumann is Associate Professor in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Zaragoza, where he teaches US Literature as well as English Drama and Theatre. His research covers a wide variety of topics, including English and American literature, Second Language Acquisition, English for Specific Purposes, discourse analysis, and the Spanish "novela negra." Within the field of literature, he has mainly focused on the examination of gender relations and desire, the representation of war and its aftermath as well as the questioning of borders and the concomitant deconstruction of self versus Other in recent US theatre. He has published on Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Jerzy Kosinski, and Tony Kushner, amongst others, in international journals such as Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre.

Pilar Royo-Grasa is Associate Professor in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Zaragoza, where she teaches English Literature and Language. She was also Visiting Scholar at the Universities of New South Wales (Australia), Northampton (UK), Regensburg (Germany), and Masaryk (Czech Republic). Between October 2015 and January 2018, she served as Secretary of the European Association for Studies of Australia (EASA). In 2025, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the University of Auckland as a Visiting Fellow, where she researched on human mobility induced by climate change in literary works by South Pacific authors. Her main research interests are contemporary Australian fiction, postcolonial literature, trauma studies, human rights, and migration narratives. She is the author of the monograph Trauma, Australia and Gail Jones's Fiction (1996-2007) (Peter Lang 2022) and has published articles in international journals such as Journal of Postcolonial Writing, The European Legacy, Humanities, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, Journal of the European Association for the Studies of Australia, and Commonwealth Essays and Studies.

Klappentext

Transmodern Literatures in the 21st Century examines the ways in which limits are being articulated, reinforced, redrawn and transgressed in contemporary literary narratives in English. They examine the generic, formal, thematic and ideological features of a variety of transmodern trends from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Inhalt

List of Contributors

Introduction: Transmodern Literatures Of(f) the Limits

Pilar Royo-Grasa and Claus-Peter Neumann

PART I

Geographical, Racial and Ethnic Limits

1. Mohsin Hamid's Exit West as a Transmodern Narrative of(f) the Limit

Angelo Monaco

2. Otherwise Vancouver in Black Speculative Fiction: from a Dialectic of Conquest to Transmodern Coalitions of Solidarity

Fernando Pérez-García

3. (Writing about) Writing about Limits: Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project

Chinmaya Lal Thakur

PART II

Limits of the Human

4. 'There Never Was a Wilder Story Imagined': Posthumanist Conceit and Transmodernity in Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein: A Love Story

Vanja Poli

5. Posthuman identities and the Transmodern Paradigm Through Fairy Tales: Marissa Meyer's "The Little Android"

Sidia Fiorato

6. Special Relativity, Real-Time Communications and Vulnerability in Outer Space and Lauren James's The Loneliest Girl in the Universe

Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen

7. Nnedi Okorafor's Remote Control (2021) and Its Africanfuturist Transmodern Agenda: Harnessing the Past to Understand the Present and Improve the Future

Dolores Herrero

8. Speaking of Fracture: Intercultural Dialogue and the Transmodern Perception of Time and Experience in N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth Trilogy

Adriana Lobato

PART III:

Relationality and Community

9. Jon McGregor's Transmodern Ethics of Re-enchantment in If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Susana Onega

10. Spatialising the Transmodern in Jim Crace's The Melody

Petr Chalupský

11. Intimations of a Life Well Lived: Beyond Food as Metaphor in Inga Simpson's Mr Wigg

Bárbara Arizti

12. Fragility and (Dis-)Connection in David Szalay's Turbulence

María Jesús Martínez

13. Dissolving Limits in Tom McCarthy's Satin Island

Justine Gonneaud

EPILOGUE

The Ultimate Limit-NOW: Future Narratives and the Present Moment as Conversion Point of Potentiality into Actuality

Christoph Bode

Index