Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm(Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature)

Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm gathers an introduction and ten chapters concerned with the issue of Transmodernity as addressed by and presented in contemporary novels hailing from various parts of the English-speaking world. Building on the theories of Transmodernity propounded by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, Enrique Dussel, Marc Luyckx Ghisi and Irena Ateljevic, inter alia, it investigates the links between Transmodernity and such categories as Postmodernity, Postcolonialism and Transculturalism with a view to help define a new current in contemporary literary production. The chapters either follow the main theoretical drives of the transmodern paradigm or problematise them. In so doing, they branch out towards various issues that have come to inspire contemporary novelists, among which: the presence of the past, the ascendance of new technologies, multiculturalism, terrorism, and also vulnerability, interdependence, solidarity and ecology in a globalised context. In so doing, it interrogates the ethics, aesthetics and politics of the contemporary novel in English.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Transcending the Postmodern Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau PART I The Poetics of Transmodernity The Transmodern Poetics of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: Generic Hybridity, Narrative Embedding and Transindividuality Susana Onega Transnational Latino/a Literature and the Transmodern Meta-Narrative: An Alternative Reading of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Sara Villamarín-Freire The Novel of Ideas at the Crossroads of Transmodernity: Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island Angelo Monaco PART II Ethical Perceptions Problematising the Transmodern: Jon McGregor’s Ethics of Consideration Jean-Michel Ganteau Using Transculturalism to Understand the Transmodern Paradigm: Representations of Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah Matthias Stephan Transmodern Mythopoesis in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant Laura Colombino PART III Migrancy and the Possibility of Re-enchantment A Transmodern Approach to Post-9/11 Australia: Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist as a Narrative of the Limit Bárbara Arizti Diversity, Singularity, Re-Enchantment and Relationality in a Transmodern World: Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness Merve Sarıkaya-Şen PART IV Perspectives on Biopolitics Transcorporeality, Fluidity and Transanimality in Monique Roffey’s Novel Archipelago Julia Kuznetski A Transmodern Approach to Biology in Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen

About the Author :
Susana Onega is Professor of English Literature at the University of Zaragoza, (Spain). Jean-Michel Ganteau is Professor of Contemporary British Literature at the University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 (France). CONTRIBUTORS Sara Villamarin-Freire, Angelo Monaco, Matthias Stephan, Laura Colombino, Barbara Arizti, Mervew Sarikaya-Sen, Julia Kuznetski, and Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen

Review :
"This book stands out as an unyielding and timely repositioning of paradigms in the domains of philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism and cultural theory through the lens of contemporary literature in English…the ten chapters of the book succeed in producing a close view of how themes such as postcolonialism, subalternity, eco-criticism, feminist criticism, etc. fall into the transmodern pattern." Sorin Cazacu, University of Craiova, British and American Studies