@phdthesis{Gasser2022, author = {Gasser, Lucy}, title = {East and South}, series = {Transdisciplinary souths}, journal = {Transdisciplinary souths}, publisher = {Routledge}, address = {London}, isbn = {978-0-367-72225-8}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {vi, 186}, year = {2022}, abstract = {"What is 'Europe' in academic discourse? While Europe tends to be used as shorthand, often interchangeable with the 'West', neither the 'West' nor 'Europe' are homogeneous spaces. Though postcolonial studies have long been debunking Eurocentrism in its multiple guises, there is still work to do in fully comprehending how its imaginations and discursive legacies conceive the figure of Europe, as not all who live on European soil are understood as equally 'European'. This volume explores this immediate need to rethink the axis of postcolonial cultural productions, to disarticulate Eurocentrism, to recognise Europe as a more diverse, plural and fluid space, to draw forward cultural exchanges and dialogues within the Global South. Through analyses of literary texts from East-Central Europe and beyond, this volume sheds light on alternative literary cartographies - the multiplicity of Europes and being European which exist both as they are viewed from the different geographies of the global South, and within the continent itself. Covering a wide spatial and temporal terrain in postcolonial and European cultural productions, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature and literary criticism, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, Global South studies and European studies"}, language = {en} } @article{Pittel2021, author = {Pittel, Harald}, title = {Fin du globe}, series = {Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology}, volume = {162}, journal = {Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {0725-5136}, doi = {10.1177/0725513621994702}, pages = {121 -- 136}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This essay argues that Oscar Wilde noticeably contributed to the emerging discourse about world literature, even though his views in this regard have to be unearthed from the margins of his works, from his early and unpublished American lectures and 'between the lines' of his major critical essays. Wilde's implicit ideas around world literature can be understood as being closely related to his broader endeavour of redirecting and revaluing the pejorative discourse around 'decadence' in art and literature. More specifically, the arch-aesthete preferred to use the word 'romance' rather than 'decadence' (a term he hardly used at all in his writings), signalling a sensitivity attuned to what he called the 'love of things impossible'. This reconceptualization of the decadent outlook was to inspire a critical ideal of literature which relied on creatively activating the other as Other, culminating in a vision of intersubjective, transcultural and unlimited literary communication. Wilde's thought can be more specifically understood as anticipating central tenets of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's evocations of the planetary, thus preparing the way for an alterity-oriented understanding of literary cosmopolitanism.}, language = {en} } @article{Adamik2021, author = {Adamik, Verena}, title = {Making worlds from literature}, series = {Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology}, volume = {162}, journal = {Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {0725-5136}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621993308}, pages = {105 -- 120}, year = {2021}, abstract = {While W.E.B. Du Bois's first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), is set squarely in the USA, his second work of fiction, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), abandons this national framework, depicting the treatment of African Americans in the USA as embedded into an international system of economic exploitation based on racial categories. Ultimately, the political visions offered in the novels differ starkly, but both employ a Western literary canon - so-called 'classics' from Greek, German, English, French, and US American literature. With this, Du Bois attempts to create a new space for African Americans in the world (literature) of the 20th century. Weary of the traditions of this 'world literature', the novels complicate and begin to decenter the canon that they draw on. This reading traces what I interpret as subtle signs of frustration over the limits set by the literature that underlies Dark Princess, while its predecessor had been more optimistic in its appropriation of Eurocentric fiction for its propagandist aims.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Temmen2020, author = {Temmen, Jens}, title = {The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s)}, series = {American Studies ; 308}, journal = {American Studies ; 308}, publisher = {Winter}, address = {Heidelberg}, isbn = {978-3-8253-4713-0}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {x, 259}, year = {2020}, abstract = {'The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialisms' sets into relation U.S. imperial and Indigenous conceptions of territoriality as articulated in U.S. legal texts and Indigenous life writing in the 19th century. It analyzes the ways in which U.S. legal texts as "legal fictions" narratively press to affirm the United States' territorial sovereignty and coherence in spite of its reliance on a variety of imperial practices that flexibly disconnect and (re)connect U.S. sovereignty, jurisdiction and territory. At the same time, the book acknowledges Indigenous life writing as legal texts in their own right and with full juridical force, which aim to highlight the heterogeneity of U.S. national territory both from their individual perspectives and in conversation with these legal fictions. Through this, the book's analysis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the coloniality of U.S. legal fictions, while highlighting territoriality as a key concept in the fashioning of the narrative of U.S. imperialism.}, language = {en} } @article{Maerz2019, author = {M{\"a}rz, Moses Alexander}, title = {Imagining a politics of relation}, series = {Tydskrif vir letterkunde}, volume = {56}, journal = {Tydskrif vir letterkunde}, number = {1}, publisher = {University of Pretoria}, address = {Pretoria}, issn = {0041-476X}, doi = {10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.56i1.6271}, pages = {49 -- 61}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This study explores the theoretical and political potentials of {\´E}douard Glissant's philosophy of relation and its approach to the issues of borders, migration, and the setup of political communities as proposed by his pens{\´e}e nouvelle de la fronti{\`e}re (new border thought), against the background of the German migration crisis of 2015. The main argument of this article is that Glissant's work offers an alternative epistemological and normative framework through which the contemporary political issues arising around the phenomenon of repressive border regimes can be studied. To demonstrate this point, this article works with Glissant's border thought as an analytical lens and proposes a pathway for studying the contemporary German border regime. Particular emphasis is placed on the identification of potential areas where a Glissantian politics of relation could intervene with the goal of transforming borders from impermeable walls into points of passage. By exploring the political implications of his border thought, as well as the larger philosophical context from which it emerges, while using a transdisciplinary approach that borrows from literary and political studies, this work contributes to ongoing debates in postcolonial studies on borders and borderlessness, as well as Glissant's political legacy in the twenty-first century.}, language = {en} }