A timely appraisal of two major schools of contemporary criticism, postcolonialism and Deleuzian philosophy, Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze establishes a new critical discourse for postcolonial literature and theory. It brings together prominent scholars from the field of Deleuze studies such as Réda BensmaIa, Bruce Janz and Gregg Lambert, some of whom explore the possibilities of Deleuze for postcolonial literatures for the first time in this collection, and established postcolonial critics including David Huddart and Nick Nesbitt, who examine the relationship between different postcolonial literary writers and the Deleuzian concepts of becoming, minor literature, singularity and the virtual. Responding to one of the most trenchant critiques of postcolonialism and Deleuze in recent years, Peter Hallward's Absolutely Postcolonial, the essays showcased in this collection demonstrate that despite the criticisms that have followed the poststructuralist-inspired postcolonialism of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, it is through the philosophy of Deleuze that the revisionary force of postcolonial literature for society and the imagination, politics and aesthetics may be reconceived anew. Where postcolonial studies to date has been primarily concerned with the politics and analysis of representation, Deleuze's work focuses on difference, immanence, expression, and becoming, all of which problematise representation as a logic closely bound to 'identity'. Yet, beyond these apparent incompatibilities, this collection argues that at a fundamental level Deleuze's commitment to a philosophy of difference without binary divisions and 'othering', his imagining of a new understanding of the relationship between past, present and future, as well as the value of his notions of becoming and the virtual, offer a set of critical concepts that, when applied to postcolonial theory and literatures, inspire a rethinking of the key issues that have come to dominate the field. Employing Deleuze in the study of postcolonial literatures, this collection, on the one hand, reinvigorates a mode of analysis at a time at which it is increasingly subject to criticism and re-evaluation, and, on the other, to make more visible questions and issues that have been little explored by Deleuze scholars.
'This volume offers an impressive line-up of scholars, who tackle the complex intersection between Deleuze's philosophy and postcolonial literature head on and with a laudable thoroughness. The strength of these essays lies in the quality of the scholarship behind them; the authors all engage fully with the difficult philosophical concepts that both Deleuze and postcolonial theory presents. At the same time the pieces are logical, well written and clearly argued.' - Eva Aldea, Visiting Tutor, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
LORNA BURNS Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln, UK. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and has taught at the University of Glasgow. She is author of the forthcoming Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature Between Postcolonialism and Post-continental Philosophy (Continuum, 2012).
BIRGIT KAISER teaches Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Figures of Simplicity. Sensation and Thinking in Kleist and Melville (Albany 2011)
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