Postcolonial Realism and the Concept of the Political

This book rethinks the political significance of literary realism within a postcolonial context, arguing that postcolonial realism is intimately connected to the specifically political due to the idea of a collective reality. It discusses a range of literary and theoretical works to demonstrate that postcolonial writers were often faced with the realities of an unstable state, divided community, and challenges of constructing a notion of 'the people'.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 196 pages
\n Publication date: 29 April 2021
\n Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
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Rewritten text:

As the scholarly world rekindles its focus on the specifically political, this book offers a fresh perspective on the political significance of literary realism within a postcolonial context. Generally, postcolonial studies has either disregarded realism or criticized it as being naive, anachronistic, deceptive, or complicit with colonial discourse; in other words, incongruous with the postcolonial. This book contends that postcolonial realism is intricately linked to the specifically political, as realist form is predicated on the notion of a collective reality. Through a comprehensive discussion of various literary and theoretical works, Dr. Sorensen illustrates that many postcolonial writers were frequently confronted with the realities of an unstable state, a divided community inhabiting a contested social space, the challenges of constructing a notion of 'the people,' often derived from a myriad of local communities with distinct traditions and languages brought together arbitrarily through colonization. The book demonstrates that the political context of realism encompasses the sphere or possibility of civil war, divided societies, and unstable communities. Postcolonial realism emerges as a response to distressing political circumstances, and it gestures toward a commonly imagined world precisely because such a notion is under pressure or absent.

\n Weight: 430g\n
Dimension: 157 x 235 x 19 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780367650780\n \n