Cookie Consent by FreePrivacyPolicy.com
JAAAS logo

Forum

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2019): The Salzburg Seminar and Its Legacies in American Studies

Postcolonial and Transoceanic Life Writing

Submitted
December 4, 2019
Published
2019-12-30

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of this forum contribution:

The study of life writing and postcolonial theory have had a long, intimate, and mutually constitutive relationship. The desire to more comprehensively understand the (human) subjectivities of the (formerly) colonized through (their own) cultural self-expression has driven life-writing scholars to significantly expand their canon and their scholarly methods. The human and the non-human are onto-social conditions imposed on colonized and enslaved peoples. In the context of transoceanic studies, various conditions of unfreedom can be found which call attention to the prevalence of lives deemed non-human within the parameters of European Enlightenment. Substantial advances notwithstanding, the field is still grappling with what Lisa Lowe describes as the “economy of affirmation and forgetting that structures and formalizes the archives of liberalism.”[1] This short piece contends that recently emerging (trans-)oceanic approaches hold great potential for taking the study of life writing an important step further on its way beyond the liberal economy of affirmation and forgetting.

References

  1. Blum, Hester. "Introduction: Oceanic Studies." Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 10, no. 2 (2013): 151–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2013.785186.
  2. Brathwaite, Kamau. ConVERSations with Nathaniel Mackey. Rhinebeck, NY: We Press, 1999.
  3. Braun, Juliane. "'Strange Beasts of the Sea': Captain Cook, the Sea Otter and the Creation of a Transoceanic American Empire." Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 15, no. 2 (2018): 238–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1387462.
  4. Burnham, Michelle. "Oceanic Turns and American Literary History in Global Context." In Turns of Event: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies in Motion, edited by Hester Blum, 151–171. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
  5. DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.
  6. Ganser, Alexandra. "From the Black Atlantic to the Bleak Pacific: Re-Reading 'Benito Cereno.'" Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 15, no. 2 (2018): 218–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1384612.
  7. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso Books, 2002.
  8. Hornung, Alfred. "Out of Life: Routes, Refuge, Rescue." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32, no. 3 (2017): 602–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2017.1339999.
  9. Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
  10. McKittrick, Katherine. "Yours in the Intellectual Struggle: Sylvia Wynter and the Realization of the Living." In Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, edited by Katherine McKittrick, 1–8. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
  11. Mignolo, Walter. "Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-Colonial Thinking." Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (2007): 155–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162498.
  12. Popphenhagen, Nicole, and Jens Temmen. "Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic and (Trans)Pacific Studies." Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 15, no. 2 (2018): 149–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1394131.
  13. Reckin, Anna. "Tidalectic Lectures: Kamau Brathwaite's Prose/Poetry as Sound-Space." Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 1, no. 1 (2003). https://doi.org/10.33596/anth.4.
  14. Sharpe, Jenny. "The Archive and Affective Memory in M. Nourbese Philip's Zong!" Interventions 16, no. 4 (2014): 465–482. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2013.816079.
  15. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
  16. Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
  17. Whitlock, Gillian. Postcolonial Life Narratives: Testimonial Transactions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  18. Wynter, Sylvia, and Katherine McKittrick. "Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations." In Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, edited by Katherine McKittrick, 9–89. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.

Similar Articles

1-10 of 112

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.