Full Description
The 20th century has witnessed crucial changes in our perceptions of Europe. Two World Wars and many regional conflicts, the end of empires and of the Eastern Bloc, the creation and expansion of the European Union, and the continuous reshaping of Europe's population through emigration, immigration, and globalization have led to a proliferation of images of Europe within the continent and beyond.
While Eurocentrism governs current public debates in Europe, this book takes a special interest in literary and cinematographic imaginings of Europe that are produced from more distant, decentred, or peripheral vantage points and across differences of political power, ideological or ethnic affinity, cultural currency, linguistic practice, and geographical location. The contributions to this book demonstrate how these particular imaginings of Europe, often without first-hand experience of the continent, do not simply hold up a mirror to Europe, but dare to conceive of new perspectives and constellations for Europe that call for a shifting of critical positions. In so doing, the artistic visions from afar confirm the significance of cultural imagination in (re)conceptualizing the past, present, and future of Europe. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
Contents
Introduction - Imaginary Europes, phantoms of the past, conceptions of the future? 1. Fragile balance: Imaginary Europes, transcultural aesthetics and discourses of European identity in Pawel Pawlikowski's Last Resort and Steven Spielberg's War Horse 2. British imaginings of a European periphery: Roger Scruton, Michael Palin and Michael Booth in/on Finland 3. Bursting the bubble: Mythical Englishness, then and now 4. Wanton and sensuous in the Musée du Quai Branly: Gerald Vizenor's cosmoprimitivist visions of France 5. Asia's Europes: Anti-colonial attitudes in the novels of Ondaatje and Shamsie 6. Long distance Afrikaners: Afrikaans literature and dislocated identity in a European context 7. Writing back or writing off? Europe as "tribe" and "traumascape" in works by Caryl Phillips and Christos Tsiolkas
