Chewing Over the West: Occidental Narratives in Non-Western Readings

Doris Jedamski

Jan 2009 · Rodopi

About this ebook

The orientation of academic institutions has in recent years been moving away from highly specialized area studies in the classical sense towards broader regional and comparative studies. Cultural studies points to the limitation of Western approaches to non-Western cultures - a development not yet reflected in actual research and data collections. Bringing together scholars from all over the world with specialized knowledge in both Western and non-Western languages, literatures, and cultures, this collection of essays provides new insights into the agency of non-Western literatures in relation to the West - a term used with critical caution and, like other common binary dualisms, challenged here. Inter-cultural expertise, seldom applied in the combination of Asian, African, and 'oriental' perspectives, makes this compilation of essays an important contribution to the study of colonialism and postcoloniality.
Topics covered include postcolonial Arabic writing; T.S. Eliot in contemporary Arabic poetry; Algerian (and Berber) literature; the English language and narratives in Kenyan art; characterization, dialogism, gender and Western infuence in modern Hindi fiction; Naya drama in India; modern Burmese theatre and literature under Western influence; Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and the Vietnamese Novel Without a Name; Western Marxism and vernacular literature in colonial Indonesia; hybridity in Komedi Stambul; and Sherlock Holmes in/and the crime fiction of Siam and Indonesia
Contributors: Amina Azza Bekkat; Thomas de Bruijn; Matthew Isaac Cohen; Rasheed El-Enany; Keith Foulcher; Saddik M. Gohar; Rachel Harrison; Doris Jedamski; Ursula Lies; Daniela Merolla; Evan Mwangi; Guzel Vladimirovna Strelkova; Anna Suvorova; U Win Pe

About the author

Doris Jedamski researches comparative literary and cultural studies with a regional focus on Indonesia and Malaysia, and has published on aspects of interculturality, (post)colonialism, (popular) literature, the culture of travelling women, language policy, and translation history. Ongoing projects include the cultural constitution and representation of the decolonizing Self in the Netherlands East Indies. She currently teaches at the University of Leiden, where she is also subject librarian for Southeast Asia and Oceania.