Monumental Space in the Post-Imperial Novel: An Interdisciplinary Study

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There has been a proliferation in recent scholarship of studies of monuments and their histories and of theoretical positions that shed light on aspects of their meanings. However, just as monuments mark their territory by attempting to ensure the existence of boundaries, sothese discourses set a boundary between their authority as platforms on which the interpretation of monumental space occurs and, in this respect, the different authority of the novel. This study crosses this boundary by means of dynamic interdisciplinary movements between selected novels by James Joyce, Yukio Mishima, Rashid al-Daif, and Orhan Pamuk, on the one hand, and various theoretical perspectives,history, and cultural geography, on the other. Through the specific choice of literary texts that represent monumental space in a typical post-imperial geopolitical contexts, Monumental Space and the Post-Imperial Novel brings into question many postcolonial paradigms. Sakr establishes a two-way interpretive methodology between theory, history,and cultural geography and the novel that serves as the groundwork for innovative interdisciplinary readings of monumental space.

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This highly engrossing study explores our paradoxical relation to monumental space as mediated by the post-imperial novel. It demonstrates the interplay between memorialisation and erasure, sacralisation and desecration, subservience and rebellious subversion, animism and petrification, combining fascinatingly detailed cultural and historical knowledge with illuminating and nuanced theoretical reflection. Rita Sakr not only reveals the transformative potential of monumental space but transforms our understanding of it through the original and timely ways in which she co-inflects the monumental with the post-imperial and brings a thought-provoking literary articulation to bear on the field of cultural geography. -- Caroline Rooney, Professor in the School of English, Director of the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Research, and RCUK Global Uncertainties Fellow, University of Kent, UK
This is an incisive and sophisticated intervention into the thrumming theoretical space around monuments and their relations to memory, history, power and art. With an astounding grasp on both major 20th-century novels (by Joyce, Mishima, al-Daif and Pamuk) and cultural theory (of Nora, Lefebvre, Mitchell and others), and always alert to the particular complexities of individual post-imperial contexts -- whether Irish, Japanese, Arabic or Turkish -- Sakr confidently builds a compelling set of arguments about how literature shapes the ways we experience and think about monuments. From a unique transnational perspective, she generates an original interdisciplinary method, brilliantly bringing together literature and theory. A stunning debut. -- Finn Fordham, Reader in 20th-Century Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
In this magisterial and compelling study, Rita Sakr reveals the degree to which the questioning of the status of memorials is a modern obsession and brilliantly uncovers the cross-cultural connections between writers as diverse as Joyce, Pamuk, Mishima, and al-Daif in their fictional interrogations of public forms of commemoration. Her richly nuanced readings, which deftly intermarry historical, philosophical, and cultural geographical insights, startlingly demonstrate that the counter-memorial and the deconstructed monument are more attuned with modern tastes and values than any heroicizing tributes. -- Anne Fogarty, Professor of James Joyce Studies, College of Arts & Celtic Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland

Author Bio

Rita Sakr is a Visiting Lecturer at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has published on Middle-Eastern studies, migrant writings, post-conflict literatures, and James Joyce. She is co-editor of James Joyce and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel (2011) and is co-editing The (1982) Siege of Beirut and the Ethics of Representation in Literature, Art and Journalism (forthcoming).