MACMILLAN Narratives of Difference in Globalized Cultures: Reading Transnational Cultural Commodities (New Comparisons in World Literature)

This book is about how the marketing of transnational cultural commodities capitalizes on difference and its appeal for cosmopolitan consumers in our postmodern globalized world. At what price? What ethical and political conundrums does the artist/writer/reader confront when going global? This volume analyzes why difference - whether gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, or linguistic - has become such a prominent element in the contemporary cultural field, and the effects of this prevalence on the production, circulation and reception of cultural commodities in the context of globalization. At the intersection of globalization, diaspora, postcolonial and feminist studies in world literature, these essays engage critically with a wide variety of representative narratives taken from diverse cultural fields, including humanitarian fiction, multilingual poetry, painting, text-image art, performance art, film, documentary, and docu-poetry. The chapters included offer counter-readings that disrupt hegemonic representations of cultural identity within the contemporary, neoliberal and globalized landscape. From the Back Cover This book is about how the marketing of transnational cultural commodities capitalizes on difference and its appeal for cosmopolitan consumers in our postmodern globalized world. At what price? What ethical and political conundrums does the artist/writer/reader confront when going global? This volume analyzes why difference - whether gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, or linguistic - has become such a prominent element in the contemporary cultural field, and the effects of this prevalence on the production, circulation and reception of cultural commodities in the context of globalization. At the intersection of globalization, diaspora, postcolonial and feminist studies in world literature, these essays engage critically with a wide variety of representative narratives taken from diverse cultural fields, including humanitarian fiction, multilingual poetry, painting, text-image art, performance art, film, documentary, and docu-poetry. The chapters included seek to offer counter-readings that disrupt hegemonic representations of cultural identity within the contemporary, neoliberal and globalized landscape. About the Author Belén Martín-Lucas is Associate Professor in the fields of Postcolonial, Diasporic and Gender Studies at the University of Vigo, Spain. She has published extensively on transnational literature from feminist perspectives, and co-edited nine scholarly collections and journal special issues on globalization and nationalism. Andrea Ruthven is Lecturer in the English and Modern Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and in the English Department at Mediterrani University College, University of Girona, Spain. Her research focuses on contemporary women’s writing, feminist theory and gender studies.