Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture
Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture

Author: Yaw Agawu-Kakraba

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2010-10-15

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0708322727

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"Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture" is a compelling study that combines elements of cultural studies and literary studies in order to present an integrated cultural representation of the emergence of a postmodern social constitution of contemporary Spain. Marking a sweeping reposition from earlier works about postmodernity and postmodernism in Spain, "Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture" makes a strong connection between postmodernity as social and economic conditions that are the result of unique features of a Spain of the 20th and 21st century, and postmodernism as life-style experiences that manifest new cultural and artistic practices of the 1980s and beyond. The study examines postmodernity by relating it to those exclusive social and cultural experiences that are patently Spanish (the movida, desencanto, immigration, globalization, and terrorism) and concludes that by virtue of Spain's unique socio-cultural, economic, and political history, not only does the country emerge as one of the most postmodern of all European nations but also that the conditions that define the country's evolution from the mid 1980s to the present constitute a distinctively authentic postmodernity.

Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age
Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age

Author: C. Henseler

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-10-24

Total Pages: 509

ISBN-13: 0230339387

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This book applies theoretical models that reflect the mediated, hybrid, and nomadic global scenes within which GenX artists and writers live, think, and work. Henseler touches upon critical insights in comparative media studies, cultural studies, and social theory, and uses sidebars to travel along multiple voices, facts, figures, and faces.

Postmodernity in Latin America
Postmodernity in Latin America

Author: Santiago Colás

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1994-11-07

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0822382660

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Postmodernity in Latin America contests the prevailing understanding of the relationship between postmodernity and Latin America by focusing on recent developments in Latin American, and particularly Argentine, political and literary culture. While European and North American theorists of postmodernity generally view Latin American fiction without regard for its political and cultural context, Latin Americanists often either uncritically apply the concept of postmodernity to Latin American literature and society or reject it in an equally uncritical fashion. The result has been both a limited understanding of the literature and an impoverished notion of postmodernity. Santiago Colás challenges both of these approaches and corrects their consequent distortions by locating Argentine postmodernity in the cultural dynamics of resistance as it operates within and against local expressions of late capitalism. Focusing on literature, Colás uses Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch to characterize modernity for Latin America as a whole, Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman to identify the transition to a more localized postmodernity, and Ricardo Piglia’s Artificial Respiration to exemplify the cultural coordinates of postmodernity in Argentina. Informed by the cycle of political transformation beginning with the Cuban Revolution, including its effects on Peronism, to the period of dictatorship, and finally to redemocratization, Colás’s examination of this literary progression leads to the reconstruction of three significant moments in the history of Argentina. His analysis provokes both a revised understanding of that history and the recognition that multiple meanings of postmodernity must be understood in ways that incorporate the complexity of regional differences. Offering a new voice in the debate over postmodernity, one that challenges that debate’s leading thinkers, Postmodernity in Latin America will be of particular interest to students of Latin American literature and to scholars in all disciplines concerned with theories of the postmodern.

Crime Fiction and National Identities in the Global Age
Crime Fiction and National Identities in the Global Age

Author: Julie H. Kim

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1476640424

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To read a crime novel today largely simulates the exercise of reading newspapers or watching the news. The speed and frequency with which today's bestselling works of crime fiction are produced allow them to mirror and dissect nearly contemporaneous socio-political events and conflicts. This collection examines this phenomenon and offers original, critical, essays on how national identity appears in international crime fiction in the age of populism and globalization. These essays address topics such as the array of competing nationalisms in Europe; Indian secularism versus Hindu communalism; the populist rhetoric tinged with misogyny or homophobia in the United States; racial, religious or ethnic others who are sidelined in political appeals to dominant native voices; and the increasing economic chasm between a rich and poor. More broadly, these essays inquire into themes such as how national identity and various conceptions of masculinity are woven together, how dominant native cultures interact with migrant and colonized cultures to explore insider/outsider paradigms and identity politics, and how generic and cultural boundaries are repeatedly crossed in postcolonial detective fiction.

Urban Space, Identity and Postmodernity in 1980s Spain
Urban Space, Identity and Postmodernity in 1980s Spain

Author: Marite Usoz de la Fuente

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1351537881

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During the 1980s, the urban youth movement known as la movida transformed the Spanish cultural landscape, particularly in the country's capital, Madrid. After a four-decade long dictatorship, artists and thinkers sought to make the most of their newly found freedoms. The vibrancy, optimism and aesthetic heterogeneity of the period are best captured in contemporary ephemera - in the fanzines and magazines that provided movida participants with an immediate and largely unmediated outlet for their creative experiments. Among them, monthly arts magazine La Luna de Madrid is arguably the most iconic, and its preoccupation with urban space, identity, and postmodernity suggests that la movida was indeed more than 'just a teardrop in the rain', as some of its critics have suggested.

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern American Fiction
The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern American Fiction

Author: Paula Geyh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1108179444

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Few previous periods in the history of American literature could rival the richness of the postmodern era - the diversity of its authors, the complexity of its ideas and visions, and the multiplicity of its subjects and forms. This volume offers an authoritative, comprehensive, and accessible guide to the American fiction of this remarkable period. It traces the development of postmodern American fiction over the past half-century and explores its key aesthetic, cultural, and political contexts. It examines its principal styles and genres, from the early experiments with metafiction to the most recent developments, such as the graphic novel and digital fiction, and offers concise, compelling readings of many of its major works. An indispensable resource for students, scholars, and the general reader, the Companion both highlights the extraordinary achievements of postmodern American fiction and provides illuminating critical frameworks for understanding it.

Constructing a New Canon of Post-1980s Indian English Fiction
Constructing a New Canon of Post-1980s Indian English Fiction

Author: Sahdev Luhar

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-08-21

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1527500497

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The literary canon implies the evaluation or estimation of certain literary texts as the most important during a particular time. The canon is not merely a set of texts; it is a set of standards, evaluative procedures and values. Belonging to a canon confers a guarantee of literary greatness. A canon is formed, by a particular group, to channelize cultural hegemony over others, or, can be constructed, by a governed group, to bring about cultural symmetry. The rise of diverse literatures in English in different parts of the world after the colonial rule of England was the consequence of an urge to articulate a cultural equilibrium or an urge to strike back. The process of canon formation is also a focused and bigoted act, and is always carried out to accomplish certain self-centred objectives. It is commonly accepted that canon formation is executed to accomplish or naturalize certain ideological functions. In the sphere of Indian English literature, Indian English fiction after the end of the 1980s has emerged as a new “canon”. This book looks into the process of literary canon formation in Indian universities, and examines such fiction as an alternative literary canon and as an anti-imperialistic response to the British literary canon. The book ascertains the anti-imperialistic design involved in forming the canon of post-1980 Indian English fiction, examines the gradual emerging trends in such fiction, and discerns the role of language, culture, and native ethos in the formation of a canon. It also differentiates post-1980s Indian English fiction from British fiction, bhasa fiction, and even from pre-1980s Indian English fiction.

Postmodern Spain
Postmodern Spain

Author: Antonio Sánchez

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9783039109142

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Postmodern Spain examines the cultural transformation experienced by Spanish society during the late 1980s and 1990s. By looking at specific aspects of culture, the representation of the human subject, the past, and the transformation of the city this book critically re-assesses the validity of postmodernism in Spain. Focusing on the novels written by Juan Goytisolo during this period this book examines the representation and development of the human subject and its identification with the marginalized 'other(s)'. It further analyses various representations of the Spanish Civil War, challenging the prevalent view of post-Franco Spain as suffering from amnesia, and thereby vindicates postmodern historical representations as a valid dialogue with the past. The third chapter examines Barcelona's urban redevelopment, analysing the transformation effected in some of its popular sites as a postmodern re-formulation of the city as a fluid, flexible public space. Finally it brings its previous findings to bear on an analysis of the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games. It argues that these celebrations constituted a performance of Spain's 'new' cultural identity designed for global, national and local consumption. Thus, these cultural celebrations corroborated the emergence of postmodernism as a cultural dominant which has exceeded modern and pre-modern cultural practices while, paradoxically, containing and enhancing both.