Francophone Literature of Africa, the Antilles and the Maghreb: Postcolonial theory

Albert Memmi's classic work stands as one of the most powerful and psychologically penetrating studies of colonial oppression ever written. Dissecting the minds of both the oppressor and the oppressed, Memmi reveals truths about the colonial situation and struggle that are as relevant today as they were five decades ago. Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer's new critical Introduction draws Memmi into the 21st century by reflecting on his achievements and highlighting his omissions. In doing so she opens new avenues of enquiry for scholars and students, and exposes new directions for activists seeking a more just world order in our neo-colonial age. With the fires of war, terrorism and protest burning around the globe, never has Memmi's work been such relevant and necessary reading.

This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa, Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelk(r)bir Khatibi and Albert Memmi, as they explore issues of language, identity and the individualOCOs relationship to history. The book places these writers in a clearly defined theoretical context, introducing and contextualising each of the four through the application of postcolonial studies and literary theory on autobiography linked to close textual reading of their works. Avoiding both psychoanalytical theory and approaches concerned primarily with the writerOCOs OCytestimony valueOCO, Kelly concentrates instead on the poetic and literary qualities of each authorOCOs work, dwelling on the politics and poetics of identity, as well as the ethics and aesthetics of this literature. She includes clear discussions of key terms such as OCypostcolonialOCO, OCyFrancophoneOCO, and OCyautobiographyOCO, which current academic discourse has rendered very complex and even opaque. The book includes a fascinating photograph of two stone tablets inscribed with Punic and Numidian scripts, now held in the British Museum, which Assia Djebar writes about at length in one of the texts studied in the book."

A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is--three decades after its first publication--one of the most important books written about our divided world.  "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." --The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.

A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition, Culture and Imperialism reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.

Edward Said was an exiled individual - the 'out of place' Palestinian in the USA. He saw the consequences of the 1948 dismantling of Palestine and the establishment of Israel through his parents' experiences and through the collective statelessness imposed on the Palestinians. His own personal experience of exile intensified when he moved to the USA. Yet despite the significance of exile to Said's life and work, no scholarship has yet focused on this theme in his writings or traced its ongoing applicability and importance. Rehnuma Sazzad fulfils this pressing need in literary and cultural research by providing the first comprehensive definition of Said's theory of exile and revealing its legacy in relation to five Middle Eastern intellectuals: Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Leila Ahmed, Nawal El Saadawi and Youssef Chahine. Sazzad argues that for Said, the ideal intellectual is a metaphorical exile. This exile does not have to be spatially disconnected from a homeland, but must demonstrate a willing homelessness through specific strategies and techniques.By selecting a novelist, poet, feminist, filmmaker and essayist, Sazzad shows how intellectuals from diverse fields become part of the Saidian discourse through the expression of these 'exilic' qualities. The book creates a portrait of redoubtable intellectual practice and in the twenty-first century context, when the frontiers of belonging are constantly redrawn, Edward Said's Concept of Exile adds new depths to discourses of resistance, home and identity.

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today. "[Fanon] demonstrates how insidiously the problem of race, of color, connects with a whole range of words and images." -- Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review

Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon's work has been deeply significant for generations of intellectuals and activists from the 60s to the present day.Alienation and Freedom collects together unpublished works comprising around half of his entire output - which were previously inaccessible or thought to be lost. This book introduces audiences to a new Fanon, a more personal Fanon and one whose literary and psychiatric works, in particular, take centre stage. These writings provide new depth and complexity to our understanding of Fanon's entire oeuvre revealing more of his powerful thinking about identity, race and activism which remain remarkably prescient. Shedding new light on the work of a major 20th-century philosopher, this disruptive and moving work will shape how we look at the world.