Transnational Culture, Transnational Identity: The Politics and Ethics of Global Culture Exchange

(Hardback)

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Globalization, it seems, either holds the promise of new horizons and new worlds, or trammels local cultures and produces uniformity. Here, Maria Koundoura strikes a singular path between these divergent views and maps the full terrain of our contemporary culture landscape. Reading world literature and engaging with contemporary critical methodologies, she explores what she calls transnational visions of language and culture, and analyses the politics of identity, representation and cultural expression. She thus presents a history of the aesthetic of our moment in modernity, and situates that moment in the economics of the global culture market and the ethics of cultural translation. Offering a model for addressing key questions of contemporary culture, identity and globalization, this book will be invaluable for all those interested in cultural and postcolonial studies, diaspora and globalization studies, as well as world literature.

Reviews

'I have read Maria Koundoura's Transnational Culture, Transnational Identity with interest and mounting admiration for its lucidity and its breadth - The book frames a set of questions about transnational identity and cultural influence - a move toward the "globalisation" of cultural studies in its new formations - while carefully tracking the residual, influential traces of nationalist and nation-based concerns in the new forms - This is theory at its most humane: setting abstract terms which enfold aesthetic speculation while mapping moral ground, and returning us, rewardingly, to the social structures that literary forms both shape and shadow. This is an important, humane, future-oriented book. I recommend it on the highest and most welcoming terms.' Stephen Tapscott, Professor of Literature, MIT '[This] book significantly expands our notion of the transnational through many different strategies, all of which give the book its multidimensionality. Revisiting the tradition of storytelling, Koundoura offers new insights into emerging forms of "realism", and into spatial/temporal realities through which contemporary global narratives achieve their representational tasks. The many voices that emerge from different corners of the globe appear to be participants in this dialogue, and the book's main objective is to lead the reader carefully through the lanes and by lanes of this dialogue - She invites all - the common reader, the academic, the specialist, and others to join the conversation - and therein lies, the appeal of the book.' Anindyo Roy, Associate Professor of English, Colby College

Author Bio

Maria Koundoura is Associate Professor of Literature at Emerson College, Boston, and holds a PhD from the English Department of Stanford University. She is the Editor of The Journal of Modern Greek Studies and author of The Greek Idea: The Formation of National and Transnational Identities (I.B.Tauris, 2007).