Identifying National Identities in Jabulani Mngadi’s Inaugural Novel, Imiyalezo (original) (raw)
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2015
Transnationalism, a topic important in redefining and understanding geopolitical space and human identity, has recently gained international awareness and recognition as an urgent human condition and issue. This collection of essays focuses the transnational perspective on US Ethnic Studies, especially those communities which have been 'historically aggrieved' (xiii). The editor, Aparajita Nanda, attempts to reconceptualize Ethnic Studies and bring it into a global framework, examining its influence on Transnational Studies, while looking toward a broader discussion across disciplines and nations without 'obscuring the particularism of the many different kinds of ethnic affiliations covered by Ethnic Studies' (1). To this end, Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism contains multiple perspectives and maintains two levels of analysis through the collection, appealing to both the popular reader as well as the academic. Nanda, a scholar in both Postcolonial Studies and African American Studies, has assembled essays which examine not only the networks that link the US to the rest of the world but also qualities of literature which minimize borders. According to Nanda, these essays look toward a 'symbiotic relationship' between ethnic and transnational literatures (6). In focusing on the spread and influence of subcultures, Nanda argues, Western hegemony will be reconciled with what she calls 'fragmentation', the rise and scattering of 'transnational subcultures' (6). Although the series claims to focus on 'literature', the editor has taken the cultural studies approach and views all products which document culture as literature. Thus, the essays range from analysis of speculative fiction and art objects to personal reflections and theoretical discourse. The book is divided into four clearly-introduced sections, giving a background note to the title and a general overview of what each essay will cover. Section 1, 'Identity Politics', includes a thought-provoking essay by Wlad Godrich, 'Beyond Identity: Bearings', which addresses a range of topics from think tanks to dictionaries to an Italian filmmaker. While discussing these topics, Godrich focuses on the theme of a productive notion of identity based on Heidegger's exploration of orientation, via Charles Taylor as recognition, arguing it is a key concept in the shifting space of identity. Both Keith P. Feldman and Esra Mizre Santesso deal with authors who are within the intersection of a transnational space and the Muslim diaspora. Feldman examines, through a perspective heavily influenced by Postcolonial theorist Edward Said, the racial struggle of Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad, her participation in the Hurricane Katrina aid group movement 'refugees for refugees', and the sense of identity she conveys in her poetry, especially the collection breaking point. Similarly, Santesso argues that Camilla Gibb's Sweetness in the Belly addresses problems of identity for Muslims in post-empire Britain. Nanda gives a brief recap of Lilith's Brood before analyzing the protagonist and another main character in Octavia Butler's trilogy to demonstrate how these characters have qualities that redefine hybridity and embrace what she calls a 'postnational complexity' (65). The last essay in Part 1, by Seulghee Lee, begins with Amiri Baraka's black transnationalism to which Lee contends Baraka's contribution to black discourses on love is a positive, if radical, source for black identity. Part 2, 'Legacy/Trauma/ Healing,' opens with a brief introduction by the editor and then moves into how the past affects understandings of identity. In Pal Ahluwalia's essay of personal reflections of on the genocide in Rwanda, he reflects how tragedies can moves us forward toward healing. Even more than that, he envisions a new discipline devoted to reconciliation studies. Steven
Transnationalism, a topic important in redefining and understanding geopolitical space and human identity, has recently gained international awareness and recognition as an urgent human condition and issue. This collection of essays focuses the transnational perspective on US Ethnic Studies, especially those communities which have been 'historically aggrieved' (xiii). The editor, Aparajita Nanda, attempts to reconceptualize Ethnic Studies and bring it into a global framework, examining its influence on Transnational Studies, while looking toward a broader discussion across disciplines and nations without 'obscuring the particularism of the many different kinds of ethnic affiliations covered by Ethnic Studies' (1). To this end, Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism contains multiple perspectives and maintains two levels of analysis through the collection, appealing to both the popular reader as well as the academic. Nanda, a scholar in both Postcolonial Studies and African American Studies, has assembled essays which examine not only the networks that link the US to the rest of the world but also qualities of literature which minimize borders. According to Nanda, these essays look toward a 'symbiotic relationship' between ethnic and transnational literatures (6). In focusing on the spread and influence of subcultures, Nanda argues, Western hegemony will be reconciled with what she calls 'fragmentation', the rise and scattering of 'transnational subcultures' (6). Although the series claims to focus on 'literature', the editor has taken the cultural studies approach and views all products which document culture as literature. Thus, the essays range from analysis of speculative fiction and art objects to personal reflections and theoretical discourse. The book is divided into four clearly-introduced sections, giving a background note to the title and a general overview of what each essay will cover. Section 1, 'Identity Politics', includes a thought-provoking essay by Wlad Godrich, 'Beyond Identity: Bearings', which addresses a range of topics from think tanks to dictionaries to an Italian filmmaker. While discussing these topics, Godrich focuses on the theme of a productive notion of identity based on Heidegger's exploration of orientation, via Charles Taylor as recognition, arguing it is a key concept in the shifting space of identity. Both Keith P. Feldman and Esra Mizre Santesso deal with authors who are within the intersection of a transnational space and the Muslim diaspora. Feldman examines, through a perspective heavily influenced by Postcolonial theorist Edward Said, the racial struggle of Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad, her participation in the Hurricane Katrina aid group movement 'refugees for refugees', and the sense of identity she conveys in her poetry, especially the collection breaking point. Similarly, Santesso argues that Camilla Gibb's Sweetness in the Belly addresses problems of identity for Muslims in post-empire Britain. Nanda gives a brief recap of Lilith's Brood before analyzing the protagonist and another main character in Octavia Butler's trilogy to demonstrate how these characters have qualities that redefine hybridity and embrace what she calls a 'postnational complexity' (65). The last essay in Part 1, by Seulghee Lee, begins with Amiri Baraka's black transnationalism to which Lee contends Baraka's contribution to black discourses on love is a positive, if radical, source for black identity. Part 2, 'Legacy/Trauma/ Healing,' opens with a brief introduction by the editor and then moves into how the past affects understandings of identity. In Pal Ahluwalia's essay of personal reflections of on the genocide in Rwanda, he reflects how tragedies can moves us forward toward healing. Even more than that, he envisions a new discipline devoted to reconciliation studies. Steven
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This research will explore the issue of identity in postcolonial literature. In the modern world with the increase in immigrant numbers, hybrid nations, and the constitution of countries with different cultural diversities the question of identity came to the surface. The research will present and discuss those theorists' arguments about the issue of identity in the postcolonial world and how they viewed and presented their ideas about constructing identity in former colonized countries and immigrants from these countries who suffered from facing the diasporas and the dilemma of the difficulty to construct their identity. The paper will investigate postcolonial novelists, especially writers in former British colonies such as V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, and Tayeb Salih. As postcolonial theorists considered the issue of identity as one of its essential discussions, novelists also exposed and expressed the conditions of identity crises that emerged in the post-colonial period. The method will undertake to apply postcolonial theories to the works of the above-mentioned novelists.
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