1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910467306003321

Autore

Freed Joanne Lipson <1983->

Titolo

Haunting encounters : the ethics of reading across boundaries of difference / / Joanne Lipson Freed

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, New York ; ; London, [England] : , : Cornell University Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

1-5017-1382-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (pages cm)

Disciplina

813/.0873309

Soggetti

Ghosts in literature

American fiction - 21st century - History and criticism

American fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Ghost stories - History and criticism

Supernatural in literature

Commonwealth fiction (English) - 21st century - History and criticism

Transnationalism in literature

Difference (Philosophy) in literature

Memory in literature

Psychic trauma in literature

Commonwealth fiction (English) - 20th century - History and criticism

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Figures of Estrangement -- 2. Telling the Traumas of History -- 3. Invisible Victims, Visible Absences -- 4. Haunting Futures and the Dystopian Imagination -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Acts of cross-cultural reading have ethical consequences. In Haunting Encounters, Joanne Lipson Freed traces the narrative strategies through which certain works of fiction forge connections with their readers across boundaries of difference. Freed uses the idea of haunting-an



intense, temporary, and transformative encounter that defies rational understanding-as a metaphor for the kinds of ethical relationships that such works cultivate with their readers across boundaries of difference. Freed points out how such works as Toni Morrison's Beloved, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things strike a delicate balance between empathy and alterity. Their engaging narratives, Freed argues, bring unfamiliar characters and distant settings to life for readers who encounter them as "other," but they also highlight the limits of fiction, holding in check the impulse to colonize another's experience with one's own. Haunting Encounters is a sensitive and perceptive application of theory to real-world concerns. It draws together the fields of postcolonial fiction and narrative ethics and suggests original modes of engagement between readers and books that promise new ways of looking at the world.