Transgressing Boundaries: Essays on Postcolonial Literature

The essays in this collection were presented at different international conferences on postcolonial literature. They have been revised and reworked. Boundaries here signify not only national and territorial borders but also racial, juridical and cultural boundaries – between high and low, between madness and reason, between what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, between authenticity and mimicry. In today’s world, an increase of mass migration has led to enormous anxiety about losing cultural identity and material well-being. As a result, surveillance of trespassers has taken rigorous forms. At the same time hospitality, justice and solidarity have become a focus of political discourse. This book analyses the limitations of postcolonial cultural criticism in the class position and explores how the literary works engage in this discourse as well as in the feminist debates that map the trajectory of third-world women in their resistance to structures of domination in the spheres of race, class and gender.