Orientations: the positions and aesthetics of contemporary migrant fiction
Citation:
David Mohan, 'Orientations: the positions and aesthetics of contemporary migrant fiction', [thesis], Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). School of English, 2000, pp 256Download Item:
Mohan TCD THESIS 5785 Orientations the.pdf (PDF) 184.0Mb
Abstract:
Touching on the work of David Dabydeen, Caryl Phillips, Fred D’Aguiar, Jamaica
Kincaid, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi I will examine, in
this thesis, the political, aesthetic and historical orientation of contemporary migrant
writing. This thesis argues that the contemporary migrant writer is an impassioned
historian and theorist of the contemporary whose fiction attempts to rescue migrant
history from the disorientating, de-historicised blur of a post-imperial present. The
fictions of these South Asian and Caribbean writers will be read essentially as
orientating fictions that attempt to re-orientate the post-imperial present historically,
fictions that attempt to place the contemporary literary migrant on a historical map
that explodes out o f and reflects on the colonial These fictions also read against the
grand narrative of Western history by reading the migrant, not as a figure who
evolved out of the originary ideology of national belonging but as a figure whose
ancestry is founded on a history of displacement and migrant passage. In this thesis
I aim to demonstrate how these writers read the migrant as a transitory, transformed
figure by historicising, in their fictions, the transition from native to migrant, and by
identifying and voicing post-imperial continuities and discontinuities in the
contemporary. In this way, I will contend, these writers simultaneously reclaim a
migrant history and define their contemporary migrant position in the postimperium.
Author: Mohan, David
Advisor:
Murray, StuartQualification name:
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)Publisher:
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). School of EnglishNote:
TARA (Trinity’s Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.iePrint thesis water damaged as a result of the Berkeley Library Podium flood 25/10/2011
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thesisCollections:
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English, Ph.D., Ph.D. Trinity College DublinLicences: