Unhomely Wests

Philosophical reflections on journeys and crossings, homes and habitats, have appeared in all major East Asian and Western philosophies. Landscape and travelling first emerged as a key issue in ancient Chinese philosophy, quickly becoming a core concern of Daoism and Confucianism. Yet despite the eminence of such reflections, Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey is the first academic study to explore these philosophical themes in detail. Individual case studies from esteemed experts consider how philosophical thought about places and journeys have inspired and shaped major intellectual and cultural traditions; how such notions concretely manifested themselves in Chinese art, particularly in the genres of landscape painting and garden architecture. The studies present a philosophical dialogue between Confucianism and Daoism on issues of social space and belonging and include discussion on travel and landscape in Buddhism as well as Japanese and Tibetan contexts. Approaching the topic from an inter-cultural perspectives, particularly East Asian philosophies, and using these to enrich contemporary reflections on space, the environment, and traversing, this unique collection adds an important voice to present philosophical, political, and cultural discourses.

In this bold intervention into the understanding of the diasporic experience within cultural studies, McCarthy challenges a critical position emergent over the last thirty years (what he calls the 'new marginalism'). He confronts the liberal orthodoxies that prevail in this area, exposing contradictions in the thinking of its major theorists.

About the Book This is a collection of essays on fiction written in English, Spanish, and Bengali that has emerged recently. This fiction is seen to reflect biculturalism, that is the amalgam of two cultures that are both hegemonic in their own ways. This approach provides insight into the works discussed by uncovering elements of the the seemingly "other," non-Euroculture, and elevates both cultures to the same level. Authors discussed in the essays include: Black British Caryl Phillips, Chicana Sandra Cisneros, Chinese American Maxine Hong Kingston, Cuban American Dolores Prida, Danish Izak Dinesen, Greek Americans Nikos Papandreou and Catherine Temma Davidson, Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Japanese American John Okada, New Zealander Patricia Grace, Peruvian José Maria Arguedas, Turkish American Güneli Gün, and contemporary English-language Indian authors Vikram Chandra, Chitra B. Divakaruni, Attia Hosain, Manju Kapur, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, as well as Rabindranath Tagore. Praise "Perhaps only a decade ago, such an ambitious, world-spanning project would have seemed absurd outside a congress of anthropologists or bankers. Today, it represents a state-of-the-art sensibility reflecting the efforts of an equally vari- ous geocultural assembly of scholars. The implications for a community of readers not only interested in but competently sensitive to such far-flung narrative geographies is equally stunning." - William Boelhower, University of Padua. Italy. Author of Through a Glass Darkly, Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature.

Caribbean migration to Britain brought many new things--new music, new foods, new styles. It brought new ways of thinking too. This lively, innovative book explores the intellectual ideas which the West Indians brought with them to Britain. It shows that for more than a century West Indians living in Britain developed a dazzling intellectual critique of the codes of Imperial Britain. This is the first comprehensive discussion of the major Caribbean thinkers who came to live in twentieth-century Britain. Chapters discuss the influence of, amongst others, C.L.R. James, Una Marson, George Lamming, Jean Rhys, Claude McKay and V.S. Naipaul.

Throughout West African societies, at times of social crises, postmenopausal women—the Mothers—make a ritual appeal to their innate moral authority. The seat of this power is the female genitalia. Wielding branches or pestles, they strip naked and slap their genitals and bare breasts to curse and expel the forces of evil. In An Intimate Rebuke Laura S. Grillo draws on fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire that spans three decades to illustrate how these rituals of Female Genital Power (FGP) constitute religious and political responses to abuses of power. When deployed in secret, FGP operates as spiritual warfare against witchcraft; in public, it serves as a political activism. During Côte d’Ivoire’s civil wars FGP challenged the immoral forces of both rebels and the state. Grillo shows how the ritual potency of the Mothers’ nudity and the conjuration of their sex embodies a moral power that has been foundational to West African civilization. Highlighting the remarkable continuity of the practice across centuries while foregrounding the timeliness of FGP in contemporary political resistance, Grillo shifts perspectives on West African history, ethnography, comparative religious studies, and postcolonial studies.