Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures) - Hardcover

Book 37 of 80: Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures

Bugeja, Norbert

 
9780415509138: Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0415509130 ISBN 13: 9780415509138
Publisher: Routledge, 2012

Synopsis

This book reconsiders the notion of liminality in postcolonial critical discourse today. By visiting Mashriqi writers of memoir, Bugeja offers a unique intervention in the understanding of 'in-between' and ‘threshold’ states in present-day postcolonialist thought. His analysis situates liminal space as a fraught form of consciousness that mediates between conditions of historical contingency and the memorializing present. Within the present Mashriqi memoir form, liminal spaces may be read as articulations of 'representational spaces' ― narrative spaces that, based as they are within the histories of local communities, are nonetheless redolent with memorial and imaginary elements. Liminal consciousness today, Bugeja argues, is a direct consequence of the impact of volatile present-day memories on the re-conception of the open wounds of history.

Incisive readings of life-writings by Mourid Barghouti, Amin Maalouf, Orhan Pamuk, Amos Oz, and Wadad Makdisi Cortas demonstrate the double-edged representational chasm that opens up when present acts of memorializing are brought to bear upon the elusive histories of the early-twentieth-century Mashriq. Sifting through the wide-ranging theoretical literature on liminality and challenging received views of the concept, this book proposes a nuanced, materialist, and original rethinking of the liminal as a more vigilant outlook onto the political, literary and historical predicaments of the contemporary Middle East.

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About the Author

Norbert Bugeja is a lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent, UK.

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Publisher
Routledge
Publication date
2012
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0415509130
ISBN 13 
9780415509138
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
256

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9781138115897: Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)

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ISBN 10:  1138115894 ISBN 13:  9781138115897
Publisher: Routledge, 2017
Softcover