- Title Information
- Title
- Being in Communities in 20th- and 21st- Century French, British, Canadian, and Francophone Novels
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Christensen, Signe L
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2013
- Physical Description
- Extent
- vi, 209 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2013)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- McLaughlin, Kevin
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Bernstein, Susan
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Naqvi, Fatima
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Comparative Literature
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Subject
- Topic
- Community
- Subject
- Topic
- subject
- Subject
- Topic
- francophone
- Subject
- Topic
- postcolonial
- Subject
- Topic
- Jean-Luc Nancy
- Subject
- Topic
- Roberto Esposito
- Subject
- Topic
- Michel Houellebecq
- Subject
- Topic
- Nancy Huston
- Subject
- Topic
- Driss Jaydane
- Subject
- Topic
- Kazuo Ishiguro
- Subject
- Topic
- novel
- Subject
- Topic
- contemporary
- Subject
- Topic
- poststructural
- Subject
- Topic
- categories of representation
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1136568")
- Topic
- Subjectivity
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1045995")
- Topic
- Ontology
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1073032")
- Topic
- Postcolonialism
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1060777")
- Topic
- Philosophy
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/999953")
- Topic
- Literature
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1073164")
- Topic
- Postmodernism
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1073231")
- Topic
- Poststructuralism
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/80095")
- Name
- Name Part
- Nancy, Jean-Luc
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1925114")
- Name
- Name Part
- Esposito, Roberto
- Name Part:
Date
- 1950-
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/291449")
- Name
- Name Part
- Houellebecq, Michel
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/56428")
- Name
- Name Part
- Huston, Nancy
- Name Part:
Date
- 1953-
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/84645")
- Name
- Name Part
- Ishiguro, Kazuo
- Name Part:
Date
- 1954-
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20131219
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Abstract
- This dissertation focuses on contemporary Francophone, French, British, and Canadian novels that portray collectives, crowds, and communities in place of individual subjects. These texts shift their focus from the single protagonist or hero onto interactions and relationships between multitudes of beings. The Subject has lost its sovereign individuality by becoming more mobile, less attached to one culture and language, and by loosening its ties to family and place of origin. This project weighs major trends of literary criticism and philosophy that argue that the subject, as an authoritative individual, is dead, against the possibility of a new kind of subject, one that is released from the unified articulation of its identity and free to be determined by the community of which it is a part. <br/><br/>
Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophical inquiry into community informs my reading of collective subjects in contemporary novels. Following Heideggar, the French philosopher locates existence in "being alongside the other." A community is neither a group of individual beings, nor a greater communal whole, but the space in which singular beings appear collectively and retain their plurality. Foreign languages, foreign genes, and foreign lands mix with the familiar, undoing notions of the homeland, the mother tongue and the human. Kazuo Ishiguro writes novels "for translation" and lifts cultural, historical, and linguistic specificities out of his narratives. Michel Houellebecq's novels capture the tension between an expanding and globalized Western world and the remaining taboos, constraints, and morals in his depiction of the Eastern world. Encounters inside a context of trade, economic growth, and persistent marketing reveal differences and participate in the formation of Eastern and Western identities. Nancy Huston refuses her bilingualism and claims to be "doubly half-lingual" and thus always in the space of encounter between different languages. Driss C. Jaydane is an author of the New Maghreb Novel, which goes beyond the postcolonial issue of assimilation of the colonizer's culture and embraces the globalization of capitalism and universal culture.
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z0JH3JJ4
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations