Diasporas of the Mind: Jewish and Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History
Bryan Cheyette
Abstract
This book throws new light on a wide range of modern and contemporary writers—some at the heart of the canon, others more marginal—to explore the power and limitations of the diasporic imagination after the Second World War. Moving from early responses to the death camps and decolonization, through internationally prominent literature after the Second World War, it culminates in fresh engagements with contemporary Jewish, post-ethnic, and postcolonial writers. The author regards many of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century luminaries he examines—among them Hannah Arendt, Anita Desai, Frantz ... More
This book throws new light on a wide range of modern and contemporary writers—some at the heart of the canon, others more marginal—to explore the power and limitations of the diasporic imagination after the Second World War. Moving from early responses to the death camps and decolonization, through internationally prominent literature after the Second World War, it culminates in fresh engagements with contemporary Jewish, post-ethnic, and postcolonial writers. The author regards many of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century luminaries he examines—among them Hannah Arendt, Anita Desai, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Primo Levi, Caryl Phillips, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Zadie Smith, and Muriel Spark—as critical exemplars of the diasporic imagination. Against the discrete disciplinary thinking of the academy, he elaborates and argues for a new comparative approach across Jewish and postcolonial histories and literatures. And in so doing, the author illuminates the ways in which histories and cultures can be imagined across national and communal boundaries.
Keywords:
diasporic imagination,
Second World War,
death camps,
decolonization,
Hannah Arendt,
Anita Desai,
Frantz Fanon,
Albert Memmi,
Primo Levi,
Caryl Phillips
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300093186 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: September 2014 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300093186.001.0001 |
