Multicultural Dilemmas
Identity, Difference, Otherness
Published on 18. March 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-3-631-56752-4 (ISBN)
Description
Multiculturalism has recently become a word without which hardly any discussion of identity, nationality or historical and ideological narratives seems possible. However, the popularity of this word and its current usefulness should not obscure the fact that the concept itself is not an easy and obvious one: many apparently firm assumptions have been disputed from a multicultural perspective, while there are still a great number of social, cultural and political spheres which need to be re-defined and re-articulated as some dominant notions and symbols have been subverted by recognition of the diversity of subjective positions and cultural identities. The concept of multiculturalism assumes that our identities - both individual and collective - are shaped by our relationships with others. This volume addresses issues of multiculturalism and identity in culture and reveals a wide spectrum of perspectives from which we look at the Other/the Unfamiliar/the Unknown. It is an attempt to reveal the patterns and practices our culture has used in order to envisage, negate or welcome the Other, and seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion about multiculturalism.
More details
Persons
The Editors: Wojciech H. Kalaga is Professor of Literary Theory and English Literature at the University of Silesia (Poland). He is also Chair of the Department of Literary and Cultural Theory and Director of Institute of British and American Culture and Literature. His publications include Nebulae of Discourse: Interpretation, Textuality and the Subject, and numerous papers on literary and cultural theory. He is also editor-in-chief of journal Er(r)go: Teoria - Literatura - Kultura.
Marzena Kubisz is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Silesia (Poland). Her research interest include sociology of the body, cultural theory and the modern British novel. Previous publications include Strategies of Resistance. Body, Identity and Representation in Western Culture (2003). She is currently working on a study of the representations of space in contemporary British fiction.
Content
Contents: Benjamin Dorfman: Writing History, Writing Resistance. History, Narrative and the Political - Helene Pristed: The Concept of Identity - Marek Wilczynski: Impressions d'Amerique. Scribbling the Wilderness - From Chateaubriand to Baudrillard - Tyke O'Brien: Alternative Geographies/Hybrid Spaces: Gertrude Stein's Autobiographical Writings and the Creation of the Location - Jacek Mydla: Narcissus Patients: Yukio Mishima, Self-shaping and its Discontents - Josephine Huang (Wen-Yu): The Presence of Native Informant: From Spivak's Reading of Wide Sargasso Sea - Aneta Zacharz: Following the Path of Rosenzweigian Aesthetics of the Uncanny - A.D. Barker: Bridge on the River Kwai and the Japanese Prisoner of War Camp Movie: a Multiculturalism Too Far? - Agnieszka Golda-Derejczyk: How to Travel in Time? Retro-Victorian Cinema - Slawomir Maslon: Shattered Skin of Glass: Other Resistance and Transparency - Marusa Pusnik: Narrating and Doing Otherness Through the Aesthetics of Media Texts - Gregor Starc: Alien Bodies: Media Constructions of Otherness through Immigrants' Bodies - Anna Antonowicz: Ethnographic Exhibitions and the Politics of Difference - British Imperial Museums in Colonial and Postcolonial Britain - Agata Preis-Smith: Gender Masquerade - Katarzyna Wantoch-Rekowska: Aggressive Machismo: Cross-Cultural Perspective - Anna Popiel: The Body of Language, or On the Mythic Narrative of Ecriture Feminine - Katarzyna Wieckowska: Levinasian Shadow: Text, Other, Woman.