Filippo Menozzi - Böcker

This book engages with current developments in postcolonial research, exploring notions of cultural transmission, tradition and modernity, authenticity, cross-cultural aesthetics and postcolonial ethics. The author considers the ethical responsibility of the postcolonial intellectual, enhancing our understanding of this topic through the concept of custodianship, which may be defined as a responsibility towards the other in forms of cultural and literary inheritance. The author introduces custodianship as a central theme and a vital question for the committed intellectual today, proposing original interpretations of major postcolonial texts by key figures including Anita Desai, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mahasweta Devi and Arundhati Roy. Through close reading and historical analysis, Postcolonial Custodianship reveals that a practice of custodianship has always been an essential element of these writers’ ethical engagement, yet in a way that has never been explored. The author contends that the question of custodianship should not be seen as a merely negative designation; it is by redefining the very meaning of custodianship that the ethical dimension of postcolonialism can be rediscovered.

This book engages with current developments in postcolonial research, exploring notions of cultural transmission, tradition and modernity, authenticity, cross-cultural aesthetics and postcolonial ethics. The author considers the ethical responsibility of the postcolonial intellectual, enhancing our understanding of this topic through the concept of custodianship, which may be defined as a responsibility towards the other in forms of cultural and literary inheritance. The author introduces custodianship as a central theme and a vital question for the committed intellectual today, proposing original interpretations of major postcolonial texts by key figures including Anita Desai, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mahasweta Devi and Arundhati Roy. Through close reading and historical analysis, Postcolonial Custodianship reveals that a practice of custodianship has always been an essential element of these writers’ ethical engagement, yet in a way that has never been explored. The author contends that the question of custodianship should not be seen as a merely negative designation; it is by redefining the very meaning of custodianship that the ethical dimension of postcolonialism can be rediscovered.

Through a reappraisal of the work of four major figures in critical theory – Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin – Filippo Menozzi rethinks the tradition of critical theory in relation to pressing concerns in postcolonial studies. Revealing these authors’ continued relevance to urgent issues in the 21st century, from struggles against racism to social movements and the transmutations of global capitalism, Menozzi reimagines them as central to an alternative genealogy of critical theory that moves beyond their European provenance and the limitations of “Western Marxism”. In doing so, this book challenges, more broadly, the view of critical theory as steeped in Eurocentrism, culturally conservative, and politically defeatist. Contesting this in four chapters, Postcolonial Historical Materialism inserts Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and Benjamin into key contemporary sites of militancy and debate.Engaging with a wide range of European and non-European sources, Menozzi proposes a new concept of “postcolonial historical materialism”, indicating how the heritage of critical theory can reopen global possibilities of utopia and revolution in a non-utopian age of global emergencies, social unrest, and the unfinished history of decolonisation.

Through a reappraisal of the work of four major figures in critical theory – Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin – Filippo Menozzi rethinks the tradition of critical theory in relation to pressing concerns in postcolonial studies. Revealing these authors’ continued relevance to urgent issues in the 21st century, from struggles against racism to social movements and the transmutations of global capitalism, Menozzi reimagines them as central to an alternative genealogy of critical theory that moves beyond their European provenance and the limitations of “Western Marxism”. In doing so, this book challenges, more broadly, the view of critical theory as steeped in Eurocentrism, culturally conservative, and politically defeatist. Contesting this in four chapters, Postcolonial Historical Materialism inserts Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and Benjamin into key contemporary sites of militancy and debate.Engaging with a wide range of European and non-European sources, Menozzi proposes a new concept of “postcolonial historical materialism”, indicating how the heritage of critical theory can reopen global possibilities of utopia and revolution in a non-utopian age of global emergencies, social unrest, and the unfinished history of decolonisation.

Global and cosmopolitan since the late nineteenth century, anglophone South Asian women's writing has flourished in many genres and locations, encompassing diverse works linked by issues of language, geography, history, culture, gender, and literary tradition. Whether writing in the homeland or in the diaspora, authors offer representations of social struggle and inequality while articulating possibilities for resistance.In this volume experienced instructors attend to the style and aesthetics of the texts as well as provide necessary background for students. Essays address historical and political contexts, including colonialism, partition, migration, ecological concerns, and evolving gender roles, and consider both traditional and contemporary genres such as graphic novels, chick lit, and Instapoetry. Presenting ideas for courses in Asian studies, women's studies, postcolonial literature, and world literature, this book asks broadly what it means to study anglophone South Asian women's writing in the United States, Asia, and around the world.

Global and cosmopolitan since the late nineteenth century, anglophone South Asian women's writing has flourished in many genres and locations, encompassing diverse works linked by issues of language, geography, history, culture, gender, and literary tradition. Whether writing in the homeland or in the diaspora, authors offer representations of social struggle and inequality while articulating possibilities for resistance.In this volume experienced instructors attend to the style and aesthetics of the texts as well as provide necessary background for students. Essays address historical and political contexts, including colonialism, partition, migration, ecological concerns, and evolving gender roles, and consider both traditional and contemporary genres such as graphic novels, chick lit, and Instapoetry. Presenting ideas for courses in Asian studies, women's studies, postcolonial literature, and world literature, this book asks broadly what it means to study anglophone South Asian women's writing in the United States, Asia, and around the world.

Drawing on a Marxist concept of world literature, this book is a study of the manipulations of time in contemporary anglophone fiction from Africa and South Asia.