Mary Gallagher - Böcker

Over the second half of the twentieth century, a substantial flow of writing emerged from the French-held Caribbean. Much of this work is both theoretically knowing and poetically potent and has attracted international attention to the literary resonances of the uniquely complex geo-historical situation of the Caribbean, and indeed of the Americas in general. Much of its passion, pertinence, and appeal inheres in its approach to time and to space, an approach still reverberating with the shock of displacement and its various after-tremors: an exploded sense of diversity; radical relativization; the profound expropriations of enslavement; colonial erosion. Through readings of high-profile as well as lesser known writing, this book tracks some of the more striking tensions and tropisms at work in the French Caribbean imagination of space and time and their intersection. It studies generic interplay, textual palimpseste, narrative structure, and other dynamics of writing that realize and manipulate the intersections of time and space, history and memory, writing and rewriting, voice and text, referential space and (inter)textual space, as well as cultural theory and literary practice, identity and difference, place and displacement. In this way, it probes both the strains and the stresses, and also the insights and gravitations that make for the particular 'French Caribbean' timbre of this volume of writing. This specific vibration, while illuminating Caribbean, New World, and post-colonial thinking in general, also encourages wider reflection on global resonances of displacement and dislocation and on more general issues such as the role of writing, and of narrative in particular, in the confrontation of absence and presence, loss and desire, distance and diversity. This book locates the problematic of time/space in relation to historiographical, geo-cultural, and phenomenological thinking and it also takes account of the detonation of critical interest in what is broadly termed post-colonial writing. Its fundamental concern, however, is to show how a particular corpus of writing has, in the space of half a century, and from a bracing position of hyper-relationality, responded imaginatively and poetically to the challenge of envisioning place, and of relating space to time.

Much has been said about the relationship between globalization and culture and the political implications of that relationship. There has been little effort made, however, to investigate the effect of globalization on poetics or on the ethical moment of literature. World Writing is therefore concerned with studying the intersection of contemporary ethics, poetics, and globalization through historical and critical readings of writing from various parts of the world. Following an introductory chapter by Mary Gallagher, which maps this conceptual terrain, the contributors investigate how globalization inflects the necessary relationship between poetics, culture, ethics, and politics. Among the essays are Celia Britton's reading of Édouard Glissant on languages in the globalized world; Mary Gallagher's comparison of Glissant's poetics of cultural diversity with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas; David Palumbo-Liu's exploration of the ethics of postcolonial fiction in J.M. Coetzee's work; Mary Louise Pratt's critique, based on recent Latin American writing, of the prematurely celebratory nature of globalization; and Julia Kristeva's argument for the value of poetics and the ethics of hospitality. What emerges is an intricate discussion of the elusive relationship between the realms of ethics, poetics, and politics as they intersect in our changing world.

Much has been said about the relationship between globalization and culture and the political implications of that relationship. There has been little effort made, however, to investigate the effect of globalization on poetics or on the ethical moment of literature. World Writing is therefore concerned with studying the intersection of contemporary ethics, poetics, and globalization through historical and critical readings of writing from various parts of the world. Following an introductory chapter by Mary Gallagher, which maps this conceptual terrain, the contributors investigate how globalization inflects the necessary relationship between poetics, culture, ethics, and politics. Among the essays are Celia Britton's reading of Édouard Glissant on languages in the globalized world; Mary Gallagher's comparison of Glissant's poetics of cultural diversity with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas; David Palumbo-Liu's exploration of the ethics of postcolonial fiction in J.M. Coetzee's work; Mary Louise Pratt's critique, based on recent Latin American writing, of the prematurely celebratory nature of globalization; and Julia Kristeva's argument for the value of poetics and the ethics of hospitality. What emerges is an intricate discussion of the elusive relationship between the realms of ethics, poetics, and politics as they intersect in our changing world.

Across the English-speaking world a storm of words has been written about the apparently terminal decline in academic values and standards in today's colleges and universities. Many observers argue that the intrinsic worth of higher education is being subordinated to a destructively exclusive focus on business objectives and the needs of the free market economy. This is happening across the globe and it appears to be an irreversible trend. This provocative and timely book has two aims. The first is to report on the worldwide coverage of the collapse of academic values in higher education, and to explain why that collapse is a social and cultural catastrophe, not just in the USA and the UK, but also in Australia, Germany, France and elsewhere. The second is to show the relevance of this reality within the Irish context. Bearing witness to her direct experience of the corporate university as it currently operates in Ireland, the author suggests that it may be too late to prevent a similar level of academic bankruptcy in the Isle of Saints and Scholars.Mary Gallagher argues that the inherent worth of knowledge and creative thought has been jettisoned in favour of its exchange value alone. She then explores in depth the implications for this new approach to education in third level education. What is lost? Who loses and who gains? And do we really want our colleges and universities to surrender the work of education to the business ethos and the profit motive? "Academic Armageddon" will be thought-provoking reading for educators, students, graduates, policymakers, parents and anyone concerned about the role that third-level education should play in Irish society.