Contemporary Literature and the State

by Matthew Hart (Editor), Jim Hansen (Editor)

Overview

Contemporary Literature and the State challenges the critical opposition between the monolithic state and the individual artist. The volume collects essays on writers as different as Samuel Beckett and Ngozi Adichie and covers historical and geographical contexts from Yorkshire to Singapore, San Francisco to Cape Town. Featuring new and established critical voices, Contemporary Literature and the State is an important new contribution to debates about the politics of literature, coming at a time when state power appears both more arbitrary and more necessary than ever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299232436
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	10/20/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Matthew Hart is assistant professor in the Department of English and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Jim Hansen is assistant professor of English and critical theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Hometown:

London, England

Place of Birth:

Ottawa, Canada

Table of Contents

Introduction: Contemporary Literature and the State, by Matthew Hart and Jim Hansen
An Interview with Jeremy Cronin, conducted by Andrew van der Vlies
Tsotsis: On Law, the Outlaw, and the Postcolonial State, by Rita Barnard
The Third English Civil War: David Peace’s “Occult History” of Thatcherism, by Matthew Hart
Failed-State Fiction, by John Marx
Life, War, and Love: The Queer Anarchism of Robert Duncan’s Poetic Action during the Vietnam War, by Eric Keenaghan
Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe and the Theater of Pure Means, by Jim Hansen
The Way Ahead: The Politics and Poetics of Singapore’s Developmental Landscape, by Jini Kim Watson
Afterword: States of Time, by Ian Baucom