Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory: Strategies of Language and Resistance (New World Studies) - Hardcover

Britton, Celia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813918480 ISBN 13: 9780813918488

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 1999

Synopsis

Edouard Glissant has written extensively in French about the colonial experience in the Caribbean. Since he is known primarily as a novelist and poet, his theoretical essays have so far remained largely unread by the English-language theorists in this field. This book situates Glissant within ongoing debates in postcolonial theory, making illuminating connections between his work and that of Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Focusing on language and subjectivity, Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory moves between an analysis of Glissant's theoretical work and detailed readings of his novels to elucidate a network of related issues. Celia Britton addresses the major themes central to his writing―the reappropriation of history, standard and vernacular language, hybridity, subalternity, the problematizing of identity, and the colonial construction of the Other―and asks provocative questions relating to each. How does the colonized subject relate to a language initially imposed by the colonizer but subsequently, to some extent, subverted and reappropriated? How does this strategic use of language come to function as a crucial mode of cultural resistance? What role can fictional representation play in this process?

This book represents the first presentation of Glissant's incisive theoretical work and analysis of his immensely powerful and subtle novels in the context of postcolonial studies. By juxtaposing them, Britton illuminates the significant contribution Glissant has made to this theoretical endeavor.

About this title

About the Author:

Celia Britton is Carnegie Professor of French at Aberdeen University in Scotland. She is the author of Claude Simon: Writing the Visible and The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory and Politics.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0813918480
• ISBN 13: 9780813918488
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240