Book
Description
Thresholds
of Western Culture explores identity, postcoloniality and
transnationalism--three closely related issues which redefine
contemporary cultural identity.
The book opens with an analysis of subjectivity and the cultural
meltdown that accompanied fascism in the West. The situation
in Africa is then explored which, while recalling modernity's
dark side, highlights the intricacy of postcolonial identity.
Post-Soviet Eastern Europe presents a separate case of neglected
postcoloniality which emphasizes how ethnocentrism and cultural
tensions have exposed the fragility of transnationalism. The
book concludes with an examination of East Asia, a region
which offers transnational options potentially much more fruitful
than Balkanization.
Table
of Contents
Part I:
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
John B. Foster, Jr. and Wayne J. Froman
PART ONE: The Crisis of Modern Subjectivity
Introduction
1. Interiority, Identity, Knowledge:
Unravelling the Cartesian Cogito.
Robert Strozier
2. Subject, Self, Person:
Marcel Mauss and the Limits of Poststructural Critique.
Anthony John Harding
PART TWO: Western Culture and the Shadow of Fascism
Introduction
3. Aesthetic Fascism and
Modern Tragedy:
D'Annunzio's Fedra.
Mary Ann Frese Witt
4. Musical Headings:
Toscanini's and Furtwängler's Fifth Symphonies, 1939-54.
Herman Rapaport
5. Holocaust Testimony and
Post Holocaust Fiction:
Cynthia Ozick's The Messiah Of Stockholm.
James Berger
PART THREE: Africa at the
Passing of White Supremacy
Introduction
6. Revisiting the Amistad Revolt in Sierra Leone.
Iyunolu Osagie
7. An Ethical Universal in the Postcolonial Novel:
Certain Simple Respect
Michiel Heyns
8. Western Classics in the
South African State of Emergency:
Coetzee's Age Of Iron and Gordimer's My Son's Story.
Lars Engle
PART FOUR: Eastern Europe After Communism
Introduction
9. Creator versus Conspirator
in the Postcommunist Revolutions.
Marcel Cornis Pope
10. Yugoslavism and its Discontents: A Cultural Post-Mortem.
Tomislav Z. Longinovic
11. Bosnia and the Ethical
Limits of Cultural Relativism:
Re-Auditing Lyotard.
Caroline Bayard
12. Cultural Coordinates
of a Bulgarian Art Hoax:
" Drafts" by Virginia, A Tragedia dell'Arte.
Nikita Nankov
V. Far East / Far West
Introduction
13. Cultural Hermeneutics
and Orientalist Discourse:
Loti's Self-Reflexive Japonisme
Rolf Goebel
14. Western Agon / Eastern Ritual:
Confrontations and Co-optations in World Views
Eugene Eoyang
Notes
Bibliography
Contributors
Editors
Index
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