As the scholarly world attunes itself once again to the specifically political, this book rethinks the political significance of literary realism within a postcolonial context. Generally, postcolonial studies has either ignored realism or criticized it as being naïve, anachronistic, deceptive, or complicit with colonial discourse; in other words―incongruous with the postcolonial. This book argues that postcolonial realism is intimately connected to the specifically political in the sense that realist form is premised on the idea of a collective reality. Discussing a range of literary and theoretical works, Dr. Sorensen exemplifies that many postcolonial writers were often faced with the realities of an unstable state, a divided community inhabiting a contested social space, the challenges of constructing a notion of ‘the people,’ often out of a myriad of local communities with different traditions and languages brought together arbitrarily through colonization. The book demonstrates that the political context of realism is the sphere or possibility of civil war, divided societies, and unstable communities. Postcolonial realism is prompted by disturbing political circumstances, and it gestures toward a commonly imagined world, precisely because such a notion is under pressure or absent.
Author(s): Eli Park Sorensen
Series: Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 204
City: London
Tags: Postcolonialism, Literary Criticism, Politics
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Postcolonial Studies and the End of History
Introduction
Literature and History
Poly-Cultural Writing
Postcolonial Studies and the Question of Representation
Theoretical-Critical Fictions
The Return to Literary Realism
Notes
Works Cited
1. Nation, Nationalism, and the Novel Form
The Critique of Nationalism
Imagined Community vs. DissemiNation
Anderson's Nation
The Novel and the Nation
Notes
Works Cited
2. The Historico-Political Discourse
Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political
Michel Foucault's Society Must Be Defended
The Historico-Political Discourse
Foucault's Hobbes
Boulainvilliers and the Birth of the Nation
The French Revolution: The Birth of a Nation
Lukacs's Historico-Political Discourse
Necessary Anachronism and '1848'
Notes
Works Cited
3. The Political Significance of Literary Realism
Introduction
The Rise of Realism
The Novel as a Form of Secondariness
Realism and Transparency
The Lure of Realism
Performative Realism
Realism as Historico-Political Discourse
Realist Omniscience
The Monopolization of Reality
Notes
Works Cited
4. Postcolonial Realism
Jus Publicum Europaeum
Postcolonial Realism
Commonality vs. Singularity
'Living Reality' and the Question of the Nation
Lukács's Critique of Modernism
Jameson's National Allegory
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
5. The Politics of Realism: Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey
Introduction
Not Enough or Too Much Realism
The Public vs. the Private
Ironic Distance
Narrative and Rhetoric
Improbable Connections
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
