Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning

Sam Durrant's powerfully original book compares the ways in which the novels of J. M. Coetzee, Wilson Harris, and ToniMorrison memorialize the traumatic histories of racial oppression that continue to haunt our postcolonial era. The works examined bear witness to the colonization of the NewWorld, U.S. slavery, and South African apartheid, histories founded on a violent denial of the humanity of the other that had traumatic consequences for both perpetrators and victims. Working at the borders of psychoanalysis and deconstruction, and drawing inspiration from recent work on the Holocaust, Durrant rethinks Freud's opposition between mourning and melancholia at the level of the collective and rearticulates the postcolonial project as an inconsolable labor of remembrance.

About the author

Sam Durrant is Lecturer of English at the University of Leeds.

Summary

Compares the ways in which the novels of J.M.Coetzee, Wilson Harris, and Toni Morrison memorialize the traumatic histories of racial oppression that continue to haunt our postcolonial era.

Product details

• Authors: Sam Durrant
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2003
• EAN: 9780791459454
• ISBN: 978-0-7914-5945-4
• No. of pages: 152
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 235 mm x 14 mm
• Series: Suny Series, Explorations in P; Suny Series, Explorations in P; SUNY series, Explorations in Postcolonial Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: general, Literary theory, Semiotics / semiology, Literature: history and criticism, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African American & Black, Relating to African American / Black American people