This collection has one central theoretical focus, viz. stock-taking essays on the present and future status of postcolonialism, transculturalism, nationalism, and globalization. These are complemented by ‘special’ angles of entry (e.g. ‘dharmic ethics’) and by considerations of the global impress of technology (African literary studies and the Internet). Further essays have a focus on literary-cultural studies in Australia (the South Asian experience) and New Zealand (ecopoetics; a Central European émigrée perspective on the nation; the unravelling of literary nationalism; transplantation and the trope of translation). The thematic umbrella, finally, covers studies of such topics as translation and interculturalism (the transcendental in Australian and Indian fiction; African Shakespeares; Canadian narrative and First-Nations story templates); anglophone / francophone relations (the writing and rewriting of crime fiction in Africa and the USA; utopian fiction in Quebec); and syncretism in post-apartheid South African theatre. Some of the authors treated in detail are: Janet Frame; Kapka Kassabova; Elizabeth Knox; Annamarie Jagose; Denys Trussell; David Malouf; Patrick White; Yasmine Gooneratne; Raja Rao; Robert Kroetsch; Thomas King; Chester Himes; Julius Nyerere; Ayi Kwei Armah; Léopold Sédar Senghor; Simon Njami; Abourahman Waberi; Lueen Conning; Nuruddin Farah; Athol Fugard; Frantz Fanon; Julia Kristeva; Shakespeare. The collection is rounded off by creative writing (prose, poetry, and drama) by Bernard Cohen, Jan Kemp, Vincent O’Sullivan, Andrew Sant, and Sujay Sood.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Permissions and Illustrations

Hena MAES–JELINEK
Postcolonial Criticism at the Crossroads: Subjective Questionings of an Old-Timer

Bernard COHEN
From Foreign Logics

THE FUTURE OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

Graham HUGGAN
Postcolonialism, Globalization, and the Rise of (Trans)cultural Studies

Sandra PONZANESI
Beyond Postcolonial Theory? Paradoxes and Potentialities of a Necessary Paradigm

Frank SCHULZE–ENGLER
From Postcolonial to Preglobal: Transnational Culture and the Resurgent Project of Modernity

Sujay SOOD
An Introduction to Dharmic Ethics

Dominique BEDIAKO
African Literary Studies and the Internet: No Territory for Africans

Babila J. MUTIA
Meaning in Character: Armah’s Teacher in The Beautyful Ones Revisited

Virginia RICHTER
A New Desire for the grands récits? Rereading Senghor and Fanon

Anna J. SMITH
Nationalist Without a Nation: Kapka Kassabova

Janet WILSON
New Zealand Literary Nationalism and the Transcultural Future, or: Will the Centre Hold?

NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIAN POETRY

Denys TRUSSELL
Poetry as Translation of History and Nature: The Poem Archipelago and the Ecopoetic Paradigm in the Pacific

JAN KEMP
Queen of the Castle; Blue Irises

Vincent O’SULLIVAN
Lucky table; Reading the Russians; Poetry, oh yes!

Andrew SANT
Islandhood; A Firework Maker on the Domestic Front; The Fireworks Lesson

TRANSLATION AND INTERCULTURALISM

Krishna BARUA
The Dancing Prankster or the Enlightened Seer? Raja Rao’s The Cat and Shakespeare and Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala

Bernth LINDFORS
“Beware the Ides of March”: Amending Julius Nyerere’s Julius Caesar

Ilka SAAL
Taking on The Tempest: Problems of Postcolonial Re/presentation

Barbara SCHMIDT–HABERKAMP
Cross-Cultural Experience and Existence in Yasmine Gooneratne’s Novel A Change of Skies

Russell WEST: Translator In Transit: Postcolonial Identities in Transformation on the Pacific Rim; Annamarie Jagose’s In Translation

Gundula WILKE
Storytelling as a Process of Transcultural Mediation: The Examples of Robert Kroetsch and Thomas King

ANGLOPHONE/FRANCOPHONE RELATIONS

Adele KING
Connections: Simon Njami/Chester Himes; Abourahman Waberi/Nuruddin Farah

Ralph PORDZIK
Maîtres chez nous – Masters in Our Own House: The Treatment of Quebec Separatism in Canadian Projective Fiction

SYNCRETISM IN THE THEATRE

Haike FRANK
The Revival of Storytelling in Post-Apartheid South African Theatre: Identity-Construction in Lueen Conning’s A Coloured Place and and Athol Fugard and The Cast’s My Life

Sujay SOOD
The Man of Man

List of Contributors

The Cover