Disrupting the Narrative: An Introduction

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Notes

¹The project, ‘Beyond the Linear Narrative: Fractured Narratives in Writing and Performance in the Postcolonial Era’, is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

²These questions came out of discussions with the three colleagues with whom I worked in framing this project, Robert Gordon, Blake Morrison and Osita Okagbue, all of whom I want to thank. Anna Furse, one of the contributors here, also made invaluable contributions.

³The seminar series' full title was ‘Disrupting the Narrative: Gender, Sexuality and Fractured Form in Contemporary Diasporic Writing and Performance›, though, as in this issue, we sometimes looked beyond the contemporary.

⁴James Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Surrealism’, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 117–151 (p. 117).

⁵James Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Surrealism’, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 117–151 pp. 121, 135.

⁶James Clifford, ‘Traveling Cultures’, in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 96–112.

⁷Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism [1993], London: Vintage Books, 1994, pp. 82, 84, 227.

⁸Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism [1993], London: Vintage Books, 1994, pp. 82, 84, 227.

⁹Linda Hutcheon, ‘“Circling the Downspout of Empire”: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism’, in Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin (eds), Past the Last Post: Theorising Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 1990, pp. 167–190 (p. 154). Other critics who contributed to this debate included Simon During, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Diana Brydon.

¹⁰Homi K. Bhabha, ‘The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency’, in The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 171–197 (p. 175).

¹¹Given that, in literature, painting and sculpture (architecture is another story), many of the aesthetic practices associated with postmodernism in fact emerged with modernism, it might in any case perhaps be a better place to start.

¹²New modernist studies as such is generally dated to 1999 and the founding of the Modernist Studies Association, though the broadening of the field had been going on for some time—the work of feminist critics on modernist women writers being one important example.

¹³Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso, 1993, pp. 187, 202, 221, 219. See also Susan Stanford Friedman's influential article, ‘Periodizing Modernism: Postcolonial Modernities and the Space/Time Borders of Modernist Studies›, Modernism/Modernity 13.3, 2006, pp. 425–433.

¹⁴She has developed this production under the auspices of the Pinter AHRC- supported research project.