Under postcolonial eyes : figuring the "Jew" in contemporary British writing
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Under postcolonial eyes : figuring the "Jew" in contemporary British writing
(Studies in antisemitism)
Published by University of Nebraska Press, for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, c2012
- : cloth
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [247]-271) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the Western literary tradition, the "jew" has long been a figure of ethnic exclusion and social isolation-the wanderer, the scapegoat, the alien. But it is no longer clear where a perennial outsider belongs. This provocative study of contemporary British writing points to the figure of the "jew" as the litmus test of multicultural society. Efraim Sicher and Linda Weinhouse examine the "jew" as a cultural construction distinct from the "Jewishness" of literary characters in novels by, among others, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Doris Lessing, Monica Ali, Caryl Philips, and Zadie Smith, as well as contemporary art and film.
Here the image of the "jew" emerges in all its ambivalence, from postcolonial migrant and modern everyman to more traditional representations of the conspirator and malefactor. The multicultural discourses of ethnic and racial hybridity reflect dissolution of national and personal identities, yet the search for transnational, cultural forms conceals both the acceptance of marginal South Asian, Caribbean, and Jewish voices as well as the danger of resurgent antisemitic tropes. Innovative in its contextualization of the "jew" in the multiculturalism debate in contemporary Britain, Under Postcolonial Eyes: Figuring the "jew" in Contemporary British Writing analyzes the narrative of identities in a globalized culture and offers new interpretations of postmodern classics.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. Under Colonial Eyes: Doris Lessing and the Jews
2. Under Postcolonial Eyes: Baumgartner's Bombay
3. Hybridity's Children: Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie
4. The Color of Shylock: Caryl Phillips
5. Down Cultural Memory Lane: Ali, Lichtenstein, and Gavron
6. The Postmodern Jew
7. Radically Jewish
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"