Global Fragments. (Dis)Orientation in the New World Order. Asnel Papers 10. (Cross Cultures 90) (Cross Cultures: Readings in the Post Colonial Literatures in English)

380 Pages·2007·2.15 MB·English

by  BARTELS

Global Fragments
(Dis)Orientation in the New World Order
C ros s
Readings in the Post / Colonial
ultures
Literatures in English
90
Series Editors
Gordon Collier Hena Maes–Jelinek Geoffrey Davis
(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
ASNEL Papers appear under the auspices of the
Gesellschaft für die Neuen Englischsprachigen Literaturen e.V. (GNEL)
Association for the Study of the New Literatures in English (ASNEL)
http://www.gnel.de/
Frank Schulze-Engler, President
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt am Main
Formatting and layout: Gordon Collier
Global Fragments
(Dis)Orientation in the New World Order
Edited by
Anke Bartels and
Dirk Wiemann
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2182-2
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents

GLOBAL FRAGMENTS: AN INTRODUCTION ix

GLOCAL IDENTITIES: MAPPING, ITINERARIES, MEMORIES
RUSSELL WEST–PAVLOV
Contemporary Asian–Australian Identities:
Hsu–Ming Teo’s Love and Vertigo 3
ANJA SCHWARZ
Mapping (Un-)Australian Identities:
‘Territorial Disputes’ in Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded 13
MALA PANDURANG
Understanding Departure: A Study of Select
Pre-Migration Indian Female Subjectivities 29
FRANK SCHULZE–ENGLER
Black, Asian, and Other British: Transcultural
Literature and the Discreet Charm of Ethnicity 47

CONSUMING GLOBALITY: PERFORMANCE, DIFFERENCE, DESIRE
MITA BANERJEE
Indian Diaspora Meets Indo-Chic: Fragmentation, Fashion,
and Resistance in Meera Syal’s Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee 61
CHRISTINE VOGT–WILLIAM
Bhangra Babes: ‘Masala’ Music and Questions of Identity
and Integration in South Asian-British Women’s Writing 73
ULRIKE KISTNER
AIDS, Pornography, and Conspicuous Consumption: Media Strategies
of an HIV/AIDS Prevention Campaign in South Africa 89
JUSTYNA DESZCZ–TRYHUBCZAK
The Global Bidding for Dorothy Gale’s Magical Shoes:
Salman Rushdie’s “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”
as a (Self-) Reflection on the Post-Frontier Predicament 105

IMAGINING COMMUNITIES:
REPRESENTATION, DISTORTION, AFFILIATION
KERSTIN KNOPF
Imagining Indians: Subverting Global
Media Politics in the Local Media 117
DIETER RIEMENSCHNEIDER
Of Warriors, a Whalerider, and Venetians:
Contemporary Māori Films 139
DIRK WIEMANN
Teaming Multitudes:
Lagaan and the Nation in Globality 153
KIRSTEN RAUPACH
“Blanched Bones, Mouldering Graves and Potent Spells”:
White Constructions of Black Diasporic Rituals in Slave Culture 171
SILKE STROH
Scotland as a Multifractured Postcolonial Go-Between?
Ambiguous Interfaces between (Post-)Celticism,
Gaelicness, Scottishness and Postcolonialism 181

CONSTRUCTING COMMON GROUND:
NETWORKS, CONCEPTS, IMAGES
TABISH KHAIR
Universal Matters; Universals Matter 199
FRANK LAY
Local Knowledge – Global Resistance:
Policies of a New Technological “Enlightenment” 215
ANDREAS HEPP
Networks of the Media:
Media Cultures, Connectivity, and Globalization 227
EMER O’SULLIVAN
At the Periphery of the Periphery:
Children’s Literature, Global and Local 241
LOCAL COLOUR IN GLOBAL ENGLISH
RAJEND MESTHRIE
Dialect Representation versus Linguistic Stereotype in Literature:
Three Examples from Indian South African English 261
ANNE SCHRÖDER
Camfranglais: A Language with Several (Sur)Faces
and Important Sociolinguistic Functions 281

TEACHING NEW ENGLISH LITERATURES AND CULTURES
LIESEL HERMES
Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife” and the Australian Short Story 301
LAURENZ VOLKMANN
West Meets East / East Meets West? Teaching
William Sutcliffe’s Cult Novel Are You Experienced? (1997) 313
CLAUDIA DUPPÉ & MANFRED GANTNER
Read the Texts and Let Them Speak, Too:
Teaching New Zealand Poetry in the Sixth Form 327
GISELA FEURLE
Teaching the New South Africa:
The Cartoon Strip Madam & Eve 341

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 357
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Global Fragments
— An Introduction

I’ve heard about a man and a woman who are walking the
length of the Great Wall of China, approaching each other
from different directions. Every time I think of them, I see
them from above, with the Wall twisting and winding
through the landscape and two tiny human figures
moving toward each other from remote provinces, step by
step. I think this is a story of reverence for the planet, of
trying to understand how we belong to the planet in a new
way. And it’s strange how I construct an aerial view so
naturally.1

S
TRANGE, INDEED, that this ‘global’ work of performance art –
described in Don DeLillo’s Mao II – should stage two people’s im-
mersion in the thick of the land and at the same time seem to require a
panoramatic bird’s eye perspective. Any terrestrial point of view would ac-
tually fail to capture this performance and only allow for tangential and frag-
mentary glimpses of it: it it takes nothing less than an impossible world-wide
view to make out the otherwise invisible connectedness of the two human
figures as they progress towards their encounter along the one civilizational
structure that can allegedly be seen from space “as part of the total planet.”2 In
order to demonstrate “how we belong to the planet in a new way,” the two
pedestrian artists ironically posit a viewer outside the planet, at that immense
distance from which alone such belonging seems to become legible. The
artists and their work of art itself, however, will be invisible in this com-
prehensive perspective, sucked into the unitary image of the blue marble ball
in black space: Whoever attempts to hold the “total planet” in his/her gaze
will lose sight of people and other singularities. Therefore, the ideal viewer of

1 Don DeLillo, Mao II (1991; London: Vintage, 1992): 70.
2 DeLillo, Mao II, 70.