http://hdl.handle.net/2328/36043 2020-02-27T03:19:37Z http://hdl.handle.net/2328/36086 Complete articles, Transnational Literature May 2016 Complete articles for Transnational Literature, May 2016, in one file for ease of downloading or printing 2016-04-27T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2328/36085 A Cosmopolitan Conceptualisation of Place and New Topographies of Identity in Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men Zamorano Llena, Carmen The current context of globalisation is often characterised by its transformative effects on traditional definitions of place and culture, especially in relation to the concept of the nation state and its role in structuring modern understandings of individual and collective belonging. In opposition to a bounded, reactionary notion of place, associated with a given, self-contained, local cultural community, human geographers have proposed a progressive “global sense of place” (Massey 1991), characterised by its unboundedness, and understood as “the location of the intersections of particular bundles of activity spaces, of connections and interrelations, of influences and movements” that link it to the wider world (Massey 1995: 59). This relational global sense of place informs sociologist Ulrich Beck’s conceptualisation of place from a cosmopolitan perspective, according to which national societies are transformed by a process of “internal cosmopolitanisation” (2004: 9) in which place becomes “the locus of encounters and interminglings or, alternatively, of anonymous coexistence and the overlapping of possible worlds and global dangers” (2004: 10). In this sense, the main aim of this paper is to analyse how British Indian writer Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men (2011) subverts, both thematically and in terms of narrative structure, a bounded notion of place from a “cosmopolitan outlook” (Beck 2004: 2). It is my contention that in the novel the location of the Pinnacles in the Mojave Desert, California, acts as a symbolic locus where the different stories that compose the narrative whole crisscross to outline a new topography of collective belonging. By historicising and re-examining from a current transnational viewpoint traditional understandings of the sense of place, with special attention to the inextricably interrelated concept of spirituality, Kunzru provides a cosmopolitanised narrative of America, which underscores the complexity and relationality of experience. 2016-04-27T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2328/36081 'Changes in Tone, Setting, and Publisher: Indigenous Literatures of Australia and New Zealand from the 1980s to Today' Henningsgaard, Per This article examines four novels written since 1980 by two Aboriginal Australian authors and two Maori authors. Two of the four novels were written near the beginning of this period and feature settings that are contemporary with their publication; The Day of the Dog by Aboriginal Australian author Archie Weller was published in 1981, while Once Were Warriors by Maori author Alan Duff was published in 1990. The other two novels (That Deadman Dance by Aboriginal Australian author Kim Scott and The Trowenna Sea by Maori author Witi Ihimaera) are works of historical fiction written in the last decade. The shift in tone between the earlier novels and the more recent novels is particularly remarkable. Coupled with the shift in tone, the settings have changed. It is tempting to ascribe the shifts in tone and setting over this 30-year period to the changing social and political realities surrounding the issue of indigenous relations in the two nations. And these factors undoubtedly played an important role in the aforementioned shifts; indigenous authors writing today are responding to a different social and political reality compared to indigenous authors writing in the 1980s and early 1990s. What this explanation overlooks, however, are the concurrent changes in the publication of indigenous literature and how these might contribute to the types of changes noted above. Indigenous writers are now writing for an international literary marketplace. This article makes it clear that there are significant implications to the shift from indigenous literature being published by small to medium-sized local publishing houses, to indigenous literature being published by the local arm of a multinational conglomerate. 2016-04-27T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2328/36084 The Performance of Identity in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows Vitolo, Daniela The paper discusses the processes of identity construction enacted by the main character in the novel Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie focusing on the performative relationship existing between agency and identity. The aim is to explore the ways in which the author portrays the relationship between relevant political facts and the dynamics of identity formation. Such events can indeed become a driving force to enact a process of identity formation that questions certain social conventions. In the novel historical events become a drive to agency and thus to the performative construction of the self. Such a construction process brings the protagonist of Shamsie’s novel to develop a position highly critical of nationalisms and nationalistic policies and to embrace the idea of possible transnational solidarities. 2016-04-27T00:00:00Z