Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature Between Postcolonialism and Post-Continental Philosophy

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze maps a new intellectual and literary history of postcolonial Caribbean writing and thought spanning from the 1930s surrealist movement to the present, crossing the region's language blocs, and focused on the interconnected principles of creativity and commemoration. Exploring the work of Ren Mnil, douard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott, Antonio Bentez-Rojo, Pauline Melville, Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson, this study reveals the explicit and implicit engagement with Deleuzian thought at work in contemporary Caribbean writing. Uniting for the first time two major schools of contemporary thought - postcolonialism and post-continental philosophy - this study establishes a new and innovative critical discourse for Caribbean studies and postcolonial theory beyond the oppositional dialectic of colonizer and colonized. Drawing from Deleuze's writings on Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza, this study interrogates the postcolonial tropes of newness, becoming, relationality and a philosophical concept of immanence that lie at the heart of a little-observed dialogue between contemporary Caribbean writers and Deleuze.

Reviews

With a twin dedication to conceptual abstraction and to aesthetic creativity, Lorna Burns has produced a sustained, post-continental philosophical account of post-colonial literature, by authors such as Aim Csaire, Ren Mnil, douard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott, Pauline Melville, Robert Antoni, Nalo Hopkinson, and others. An impressively sophisticated accomplishment. * Rey Chow, Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature, Duke University, USA *
Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze is a brilliant and spirited defense of the intimate relevancy of Deleuzian thought to Caribbean thinkers including Aim and Suzanne Csaire, Ren Mnil, Derek Walcott, and above all, Wilson Harris and Edouard Glissant. Moving with grace and sophistication between philosophical and literary critique, Burns shows how a panoply of Deleuzian concepts inform and enrich our understanding of Caribbean literary thought and creation. * Nick Nesbitt, Princeton University, USA *
An incisive intervention in contested waters and a significant contribution to Caribbean and postcolonial studies. * Professor Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia, USA *
With Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze, Lorna Burns has produced a sophisticated, challenging intervention in the field [of postcolonial studies] . . . To say there is much to contest in this study is less a criticism than a testament to the eloquence and force with which Burns makes her case. -- Michael Niblett, University of Warwick * Journal of Postcolonial Writing *
[This book] should be required reading for students of postcolonial theory ... [I]mportant, challenging, and a pleasure to read. -- Franoise Lionnet, University of California, USA * H-France Review *

Author Bio

Lorna Burns is Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures at the University of St Andrews, UK