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Acknowledging the significance of Edward Said's Orientalism for contemporary discourse, the contributors to this volume deconstruct, rearrange, and challenge elements of his thesis, looking at the new conditions and opportunities offered by globalization.
What can a renewed or reconceptualized Orientalism teach us about the force and limits of our racial imaginary, specifically in relation to various national contexts? In what ways, for example, considering our greater cross-cultural interaction, have clichés and stereotypes undergone a metamorphosis in contemporary societies and cultures? Theoretically, and empirically, this book offers an expansive range of contexts, comprising the insights, analytical positions, and perspectives of a transnational team of scholars of comparative literature and literary and cultural studies based in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, USA, Singapore, Taiwan, and Turkey. Working with, through and beyond Orientalism, they examine a variety of cultural texts, including the novel, short story, poetry, film, graphic memoir, social thought, and life writing. Making connections across centuries and continents, they articulate cultural representation and discourse through multiple approaches including critical content analysis, historical contextualization, postcolonial theory, gender theory, performativity, intertextuality, and intersectionality.
Given its unique approach, this book will be essential reading for scholars of literary theory, film studies and Asian studies, as well as for those with a general interest in postcolonial literature and film.
Sommario
1. Introduction: Resisting Orientalism; Part I: (Neo)Imperial Desire and Re(pro)ductive Stereotypes; 2. Masquerade, Mise-en-Scène and Female Harem Desire in Abdul the Damned (1935); 3. Zen and the Art of Cultural Cliché: Three Cinematic Pilgrimages to Japan in the New Millennium; 4. "Putting it My Way, but Nicely": Neocolonialism in Feminist Clothing in Andy Tennant's Anna and the King (1999) and Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I (1956); Part II: East-West Travel and Cultural Translation; 5. Steinbeck's East of Eden: Progenitor of Chinese American Intertextual and Intercultural Encounters; 6. "The Impossibility of Knowing": Exoticism and East-West Intersections in the Travel Writings of Victor Segalen; 7. A Passage to the West: Globalization and the Refugee Crisis in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West; 8. "Make the Best of Both Worlds": Utopianism in Aldous Huxley's Island and D. T. Suzuki's Social Thought; 9. Remote Translators: Translational Life Narrative in Edward Seidensticker and Donald Richie; Part III: Re-Orienting National History and Glocalizing Contexts; 10. Rethinking Rural China: Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum and the Roots-Searching Movement in a Post-Cultural Revolution Context; 11. China's Orient in Fan de Siècle Culture; 12. Reorienting Sinophone America through "Sinophone Orientalism"; 13. Between Script and Genre: A Space Where East Meets West; Index
Riassunto
Acknowledging the significance of Edward Said’s Orientalism for contemporary discourse, the contributors to this volume deconstruct, rearrange and challenge elements of his thesis, looking at the new conditions and opportunities offered by globalization.
