Routledge Literary Studies in Social Justice – serie

Resistance and Identity in Twenty-First Century Literature and Culture: Voices of the Marginalized is a compendium of reflections on literary texts, politics of literature and culture. The book proffers ruminations on the pivotal role of constructive and positive resistance to reconstruct identities for meaningful human existence. The disciplinary power and dominance coerce the natural body to resist and yearn for freedom. One can establish unique identity by refusing to conform to pressures of society that deform the natural body. Dominant forces and oppressive structures evoke resistance that can range from 'polite demurral' to 'refusal'. Resistance comes from the 'will' that refuses to be controlled and governed. The 'refusal' of the ordinary illuminates ordinary lives/ bodies. Language and literary texts contain essential truths of such human existence. Words and imaginary worlds in literary works reveal truth and suggest possibilities for reconfiguring the order.

Resistance and Identity in Twenty-First Century Literature and Culture: Voices of the Marginalized is a compendium of reflections on literary texts, politics of literature and culture. The book proffers ruminations on the pivotal role of constructive and positive resistance to reconstruct identities for meaningful human existence. The disciplinary power and dominance coerce the natural body to resist and yearn for freedom. One can establish unique identity by refusing to conform to pressures of society that deform the natural body. Dominant forces and oppressive structures evoke resistance that can range from 'polite demurral' to 'refusal'. Resistance comes from the 'will' that refuses to be controlled and governed. The 'refusal' of the ordinary illuminates ordinary lives/ bodies. Language and literary texts contain essential truths of such human existence. Words and imaginary worlds in literary works reveal truth and suggest possibilities for reconfiguring the order.

The Persistence of Racialization: Literature, Gender, and Ethnicity represents an attempt at unpacking the legacy of modern ideas of race initiated and established during the conquest of the Americas and their current relevance for literary criticism of ethnic writing, also known as minority writing. The book challenges ideas of a post-racial globalized world to question the tendency to devalue ethnic literary writing in general, and ethnic women’s productions in particular, by questioning reductive literary criticism of ethnic writing that perpetuates bias against ethnic writing and its authors. By advocating for a decolonial literary imagination, the book urges literary critics of ethnic writing to consider the complexities of modern race and its enduring impact on contemporary social and cultural narratives. Updated literary analyses of Jewish Argentine, Turkish German, and Chinese American women writers encourage literary critics of ethnic writing to explore alternative transnational frameworks that prioritize equity, diversity, and social justice.

The Persistence of Racialization: Literature, Gender, and Ethnicity represents an attempt at unpacking the legacy of modern ideas of race initiated and established during the conquest of the Americas and their current relevance for literary criticism of ethnic writing, also known as minority writing. The book challenges ideas of a post-racial globalized world to question the tendency to devalue ethnic literary writing in general, and ethnic women’s productions in particular, by questioning reductive literary criticism of ethnic writing that perpetuates bias against ethnic writing and its authors. By advocating for a decolonial literary imagination, the book urges literary critics of ethnic writing to consider the complexities of modern race and its enduring impact on contemporary social and cultural narratives. Updated literary analyses of Jewish Argentine, Turkish German, and Chinese American women writers encourage literary critics of ethnic writing to explore alternative transnational frameworks that prioritize equity, diversity, and social justice.

This is the first book to focus on writing by black British women writers, using an approach that highlights the potential of this fiction to intervene into discourses that shape the worlds in which it is situated.Reading to Resist: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing undertakes a close, innovative reading of the novels selected, one that focuses on the texts’ aesthetics as well as their thematic engagement with the worlds of their readers and the worlds the texts themselves construct. Each chapter examines themes such as freedom and agency, moral understanding, and history, while also exploring issues of importance to the contemporary period such as well-being, success, and achievement. Reading to Resist: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing covers a broad range of texts including the work of internationally acclaimed writers such as Nadifa Mohamed, Zadie Smith, Diana Evans and Buchi Emecheta, as well as work by much less well-known writers such as Jacqueline Walker, Yvvette Edwards, and Jacqueline Roy.

This collection casts the spotlight on Asia and its place in global studies on trauma to explore the ways in which violence and trauma are (re)enacted, (re)presented, (re)imagined, reconciled, and consumed through various mediums in the region. The discussions revolve around the ethics of representing and discussing trauma as we negotiate the tensions between trauma and political, historical, literary, and cultural representations in written, visual, digital, and hybrid forms. It examines how perspectives about trauma are framed, perpetuated, and/or critiqued via theories and research methods, and how a constructive tension between theory, method, and experience is essential for critical discourse on the subject. It will discuss varied ways of understanding violence through multidisciplinary perspectives and comparative literature, explore the "violent psyches" of narratives and writings across different mediums and platforms, and engage with how violence and trauma continue to influence the telling and form of such narratives.

This collection casts the spotlight on Asia and its place in global studies on trauma to explore the ways in which violence and trauma are (re)enacted, (re)presented, (re)imagined, reconciled, and consumed through various mediums in the region. The discussions revolve around the ethics of representing and discussing trauma as we negotiate the tensions between trauma and political, historical, literary, and cultural representations in written, visual, digital, and hybrid forms. It examines how perspectives about trauma are framed, perpetuated, and/or critiqued via theories and research methods, and how a constructive tension between theory, method, and experience is essential for critical discourse on the subject. It will discuss varied ways of understanding violence through multidisciplinary perspectives and comparative literature, explore the "violent psyches" of narratives and writings across different mediums and platforms, and engage with how violence and trauma continue to influence the telling and form of such narratives.

A vital resource for anyone interested in literature and politics, this is the first in-depth study of epistemic injustice as a concept for literary studies. Focusing on contemporary fiction in an age of post-truth, it shows how eight novels set in different global contexts reveal epistemic injustice as an authoritarian practice and offer an aesthetics of resistance. Epistemic injustice valorises the thinking of those in power while suppressing other people’s knowledge; it declares some people omniscient and others targets for violence. This book tracks how the novels make tangible its strategic use and effects while suggesting – in their form as well as their content – that something else is possible. Bridging political philosophy and literary analysis in clear prose, this study offers exciting new stimuli for reading groups and general readers as well as for students of literature.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This volume addresses the notion of (in)hospitality in the culture, literature, and thought of Chicanx and Latinx in the United States. It underscores those “stranger others” against whom nativist fear and state violence are directed: undocumented migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Critical analyses focus on the topics of immigration and state violence, hospitality in written and visual narratives, and the role of hospitality in the translation of academic and literary works. All essays explore the conditional character of hospitality towards Chicanx and Latinx and its attending myths and discourses. Dwelling on the predicament that individuals and groups face as strangers, unwelcome guests, and unwilling hosts, the essays also explore the ways in which Chicanx and Latinx writers, artists, and filmmakers may or may not challenge the guest-host relationship. The ethical concern that runs through the volume considers material history and the institutional, disciplinary regulation of the uncertainty of hospitality acts as factors determining the narratives about foreign others.Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license

This volume addresses the notion of (in)hospitality in the culture, literature, and thought of Chicanx and Latinx in the United States. It underscores those “stranger others” against whom nativist fear and state violence are directed: undocumented migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Critical analyses focus on the topics of immigration and state violence, hospitality in written and visual narratives, and the role of hospitality in the translation of academic and literary works. All essays explore the conditional character of hospitality towards Chicanx and Latinx and its attending myths and discourses. Dwelling on the predicament that individuals and groups face as strangers, unwelcome guests, and unwilling hosts, the essays also explore the ways in which Chicanx and Latinx writers, artists, and filmmakers may or may not challenge the guest-host relationship. The ethical concern that runs through the volume considers material history and the institutional, disciplinary regulation of the uncertainty of hospitality acts as factors determining the narratives about foreign others.Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license

In the twenty-first century, millions have been forcibly displaced due to ethno-religious conflicts, socio-political instability, and economic crises, turning migration into a global phenomenon.The traumatic realities of refugees – imprisonment, torture, loss, discrimination, and marginalisation – have increasingly become subjects of academic inquiry across multiple disciplines. Literature has also played a crucial role in representing these complexities, and offered fictionalised accounts of refugee experiences before, during, and after migration. This book critically examines contemporary refugee narratives, and highlights their potential to universalise the refugee experience. It argues that while contemporary refugee literature challenges dominant representations and reclaims subjectivity, it is also shaped by the Western literary marketplace, which refashions displacement into marketable narratives of resilience and redemption, tempering its radical potential and framing it within apolitical humanitarian discourse that prioritises empathy over structural critique.The book calls for refugee narratives to resist market-driven expectations and engage in epistemic disobedience, challenging dominant frameworks that dictate how refugee experiences should be represented, understood, and consumed.

Capitalist Modernity, Dissident Metaphors analyzes expressive commonalities across dissident cultures in the contemporary transatlantic.This book coheres around the shared use of subversive metaphors in Africa and the Americas, offering a close study of selected texts from Nigeria, Peru, and the United States. Montesano articulates his view of texts as speech-producing social actors, engaging racial capitalist theory as an essential context for his global comparative analysis.Through readings of works by James Baldwin, Joy Harjo, Ralph Ellison, Alonso Cueto, Ogaga Ifowodo, and Sonia Sanchez in collaboration with Sweet Honey in the Rock, the project investigates the political significance of subversive arts on the one hand, and the mediated nature of their impact on the other hand.In its scrutiny of literature’s capacities and its constraints within the political sphere, this book helps artists, educators, and general readers make better use of its powers.

Rights War tracks how the human rights framework is weaponized against the oppressed, and it makes the case for the central place of literature in understanding this seizure of narrative control. While literary humanitarianism depoliticizes suffering and positions the reader as a savior to traumatized Others, Rights War shows how contemporary fiction by women of color and queer writers across the African diaspora engage innovative narrative paradigms to address structural inequities. It analyzes strategies set out in this literature for disarming savior victimism, which it identifies as a pernicious cultural phenomenon in which the powerful proclaim themselves saviors to and victims of those they marginalize. As the disassociation of national rights from international human rights and the disconnection of civil and political rights from social and economic rights provoke a contest of victimhood, this book offers a renewed argument for the indivisibility of rights and the social justice function of literature.

Human Rights and Indian Literary Communities explores the relation between literature, the public sphere, and the notion of personhood as understood through the concept of human rights in India. While discussing the challenges of social equality, the universal notion that everyone is a rights-bearing person, and rule of law in a postcolonial society like India, it outlines the historical trajectories, geographies, and social processes that go into the making of human rights.This edited collection presents various interpretations of the concept of literary communities, highlighting their indispensable role to the demands of human rights discourse. Each chapter analyses narratives as told in various media and environments - from the public sphere and the Constitution to archival letters, novels, poetry, and short stories, as well as documentary and feature films. Contributions from human rights and literary scholars and researchers also adopt an intersectional lens, discussing the micro-histories of the anti-colonial struggle, debates within the queer movement, and the relationship between religion and rights. Wide in scope, this book adopts a sharp focus on the capacity of literary communities to collectively equip those with rights with empathy and care.By demonstrating how a rights-bearing person is written, not simply constructed, into being, this comprehensive text is an ideal resource for researchers of literary, legal, and postcolonial studies.

Wynter’s Queer Revolution: Community Organizing and the Future of the Humanities answers the question, What’s the point of teaching humanities in the interregnum?The book emerges from the wisdom of colleagues teaching Community Change Studies at public colleges with Black, Brown, immigrant, and low-income students across the United States—framing praxis with a vision for a Community Organizing Humanities. Grounded in practices of collective struggle, the pedagogies that nourish them, the decolonial thought of Sylvia Wynter, and generative insights of queer theory, this book licenses a new project for the humanities: cultivating “revolutionary collective subjects.” What if education itself, as Wynter suggests, were reimagined as an initiation into “queerer” collective subjectivities for the human species? Hannah Ashley makes the case that just as the humanities can enrich organizing, organizing can reinvigorate the humanities—bridging theory and practice to shape a more just and as yet unimagined world.This rigorous yet accessible volume is essential reading for teacher-scholars working in public humanities, community change studies, or sustainability and is practical and applied enough for organizers and anyone invested in reshaping the human story in this urgent time between the polycrisis and the world yet to come.