Research Catalog

Title

The postcolonial citizen : the intellectual migrant / Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt.

Author

Dutt-Ballerstadt, Reshmi

Publication

New York : Peter Lang, 2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 150 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

The twentieth century has witnessed the rise of a large population of postcolonial intellectual migrants "willingly" arriving from formerly colonized countries into the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada to pursue intellectual goals. Embedded in this movement from the formerly colonized spaces into the West is the vexed question of dislocation and displacement for these intellectual subjects. The Postcolonical Citizen traces how such modes of (un)belonging are represented within literary and cultural space and how migrancy, and in particular the postcolonial "intellectual" migrant, is symbolically and philosophically understood as a cultural icon of displacement in the West. Using literary texts, autobiographical narrative of displacement, and cultural criticism, this book treats the cultural reception of intellectual migrancy (particularly within America) as both an uneasy and ambiguous condition. What is timely about this book's treatment of migrancy is the current threat imposed on postcolonial writers and scholars in the United States post-9/11. The book examines and exposes the consequences of intellectually intervening into democratic ideals after the rise of the "national security state"--giving the migrant sensibility of dislocation a socio-political dimension. Thus, in dealing with the cultural reception of migrancy, The Postcolonial Citizen clearly marks the shift between pre- and post-9/11 migrant subjectivity and particularly addresses how the "third world" intellectual migrant has become synonymous with the voice of dissent and threat to the established democratic order in the United States. -- Back cover.

Series Statement

Postcolonial studies, 1942-6100 ; v. 3

Uniform Title

Postcolonial studies (New York, N.Y.) v. 3.

Subject

• Commonwealth literature (English) > History and criticism
• Emigration and immigration in literature
• Immigrants in literature
• Home in literature
• Displacement (Psychology) in literature
• Identity (Psychology) in literature
• Postcolonialism in literature
• Feminism in literature

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Remapping home -- The arrival and the I-94: predicaments for entering and leaving -- Forging states of belonging: migrant memory, nation, and subjectivity in Meena Alexander's memoir Fault lines -- Double displacement, homelessness, and nomadism: questions of belonging in Jhumpa Lahiri's narratives -- Threatening bodies, dangerous knowledge, legal interventions -- The question of returns: irresolution of locations -- Conclusion.

ISBN

9781433106019 (hbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2009039370

OCLC

• 445480466
• SCSB-12741852

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library