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The Contemporary Novel and the Global South: Relation, Recognition, and the Utopian Impulse
Ist Teil von
Studies in the novel, 2021-06, Vol.53 (2), p.165-185
Ort / Verlag
Denton: Johns Hopkins University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2021
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Project MUSE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Although the subject of much definitional debate, less attention has been paid to the Global South as a framework for literary analysis. I argue that this relational and comparative paradigm offers a critical vocabulary for elucidating the ways in which works of contemporary fiction are thinking along “global” axes, via analysis of three novels by writers from the African continent: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow (2004–2007–2006), Chris Abani’s The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), and, most extensively, Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account (2014). Not only do these works emerge and explore the experiences of people from regions of the world identified as the “Global South,” they illuminate the underlying dynamics of the concept, exploring the tensions between recognition and relation as its constituting forces. In the process, all three posit possible worlds-otherwise, utopian alternatives that remain to be defined but toward which the narrative nonetheless moves.