"During the political and historical upheavals of the mid-20th century, writers from colonized and occupied spaces questioned the necessity and ethics of their histories. Uncertainties about how to represent shifting spaces were reflected in the work of scholars and audiences reading works written by colonized peoples. As empire "wrote back" to the self-ordained centers of the world, modes of representation underwent a transformation. Exploring novels and diverse forms of literature from regions in West Africa, the Middle East, and Indigenous America, Maps of Empire examines how writers struggle with unstable boundaries generated by colonial projects and their dissolution, creating alternative topographies."--
"This book examines how literary forms were affected by the decay and break up of old models of imperial administration during the middle of the 20th century."--
Maps of Empire examines how literature was affected by the decay and break up of old models of imperial administration in the mid-twentieth century.
During the political upheavals of the mid-twentieth century, as imperialism was unraveling on a grand scale, writers from colonized and occupied spaces questioned the necessity and ethics of their histories. As empire "wrote back" to the self-ordained centres of the world, modes of representation underwent a transformation.
Exploring novels and diverse forms of literature from regions in West Africa, the Middle East, and Indigenous America, Maps of Empire considers how writers struggle with the unstable boundaries generated by colonial projects and their dissolution. The literary spaces covered in the book form imaginary states or reimagine actual cartographies and identities sanctioned under empire. The works examined in Maps of Empire, through their inner representations and their outer histories of reception, inspire and provoke us to reconsider boundaries.
