Tendencies: Identities, Texts, Cultures
Deconstructing Ireland intervenes with authority and originality in an area rife with debate and passionate opinion, where cultural theory and analysis run alongside the daily challenge of political events. Colin Graham examines the course by which the history of modernity and colonialism has constructed an idea of 'Ireland', produced more often as a citation than an actuality.
The author's approach - using Derridean deconstruction in alliance with positions in postcolonial and Subaltern Studies - illuminates the way in which this concept of the nation plays across discourses of authenticity, fiction and fantasy in a fascinating range of material. Successive chapters examine the utopian musings of Ignatius Donnelly, John Mitchel and Seán Hillen; the continuing reinvention of Irish criticism; the relation of the figure of the intellectual-artist and the 'people' in James Joyce; the tension between postcolonialism and nationalism in the Field Day project and the political thought of John Hume and Richard Kearney; the relation of gender and nation in stories by Gerry Adams and Frank Delaney; the complex appeal to authenticity in political philosophy, tourism and advertising; and the resonant cultural meanings of 'Irish' ephemera and kitsch.
Deconstructing Ireland presents a compelling, astutely theorised cultural history. It will be of interest to readers both inside and outside Irish Studies, who are keen to unravel the implications of postcoloniality and to understand the role of literature, political writing, popular culture and criticism itself in maintaining, deconstructing, and reconfiguring the idea of national identity.
Key Features
- Includes illustrations of various images of Ireland
- Offers a unique and compelling cultural history of Ireland
- Considers relationship of cultural forms such as television, film, tourism, advertising to the formation of Irish identity
- Sets these cultural forms against the complacencies of an essentialised 'Irishness' constructed by dominant cultural and political discourse
This innovative book looks at representations of ethnic and racial identities in relation to the development of urban culture in postindustrialised American cities. The concept of 'urban space' organises the detailed illustration of a series of themes which structure chapters on white paranoia and urban decline; memories of urban passage; the racialised underclass; urban crime and justice; and globalisation and citizenship.
The book focuses on a range of literary and visual forms including novels, journalism, films (narrative and documentary) and photography to examine the relationship between race and representation in the production of urban space. Texts analysed include writings by Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities), Toni Morrison (Jazz), John Edgar Wildeman (Philadelphia Fire) and Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress). Films covered include Falling Down, Strange Days, Hoop Dreams and Clockers.
Provocative and absorbing, this interdisciplinary treatment of urban representations engages contemporary theoretical and sociological debates about race and the city. Issues of space and spatiality in representations of the city are explored and the author shows how expressive forms of literary and visual representation interact with broader productions of urban space.
It is commonly accepted that identity or a sense of self is constructed by and through narrative - the stories we tell ourselves and each other about our lives. This book explores the complex relationships that exist between memory, nostalgia, writing and identity. The author examines a range of autobiographical and first-person fictional texts from holocaust literature, women's writing and popular fiction. Each text foregrounds issues of memory, history and trauma in the construction of identity. There are close readings of texts including Sylvia Fraser's My Father's House, Margaret Atwood's Cats Eye, Barbara Vine's A DarkAdapted Eye, Toni Morrison's Beloved, George Perec's W Or the Memory of Childhood, and Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces. Reading these texts of memory shows that 'remembering the self' depends not on restoring an original identity, but on 're-membering', on putting past and present selves together, moment by moment, in a process of provisional reconstruction. This is a powerful contribution to the growing field of 'trauma' and holocaust studies. It will be of relevance to those working in the areas of literary and cultural studies, which are witnessing a steady growth of interest in autobiography, theories of narrative, and the relationship between trauma, history and memory.
Key Features
- Close readings of recent fiction and autobiography, including Toni Morrison's Beloved, Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces and the popularthrillers of Barbara Vine
- An interrogation of the models of memory which underpin the constructionof narratives and of identities, and of culture
- A focus on meaning as constructed by the readers of the narrative text
- An exploration of the myths of 'origin'
Promiscuous sexuality remains a central source of cultural fear and fascination, as seen in the resurgence of heated debates within American gay culture on its place in the era of AIDS. Cruising Culture provides the first extensive critical examination of competing understandings and experiences of promiscuity, both in post-war American gay culture and in American culture more broadly.
In this original and provocative book, Ben Gove unpicks the root assumptions and contradictions which contribute to dominant punitive notions of promiscuous sex and desire. He challenges normative dichotomies between 'good' monogamous sexualities and 'bad' promiscuous sexualities by illustrating the inherent promiscuousness of all sexual desire, regardless of consciously expressed attitudes to sexual practice. The reader is guided through the maze of conflicting attitudes towards promiscuity in American gay culture with innovative readings of texts by influential, but hitherto critically neglected, authors such as Andrew Holleran, Larry Kramer, John Rechy, Edmund White and David Wojnarowicz. The book also draws on numerous critical and historical perspectives to represent an intricate picture of promiscuous sexual life in contemporary America.
Cruising Culture will be essential reading for gay/elesbian/queer studies, gender studies and American studies, and for anyone else seeking a thorough discussion of the complex debates surrounding promiscuity.
Cultural fictions - texts written from the perspective of the edge - are the focus of this exciting and enlightening book. The author examines the formations of narratives of identity in contemporary 'borderline' fictions and films. The work of migrant and marginalised groups located at the boundaries of nations, cultures, classes, ethnicities, sexualities and genders, is explored through an intricate weaving of theory with textual analysis. Organised around the themes of memory, tradition and 'belonging', the book proposes the space of 'migrant' writing - an emerging third space - as one that challenges fixed assumptions about identity.
The cross-cultural range - including texts from British, Caribbean, Chinese-American, Indo-Caribbean, Canadian, Cuban and Indian writers; the original discussion of authors such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Anzaldua, Amy Tan, Gish Jen, Hanif Kureishi and Chang-rae Lee; and engagement with the work of theorists including Bakhtin, Freud, Lyotard, de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, produces a significant contribution to the broadening definitions of ethnicity and the 'post-colonial'.
Works explored include Jasmine, Borderlands, The Joy Luck Club, The Wedding Banquet, Dreaming in Cuban, My Year of Meat, Buddha of Suburbia and East is East. These contemporary texts and films will make this book accessible to a broad range of readers.
