The plantation in the postslavery imagination / Elizabeth Christine Russ.
2009
PQ7082.N7 R89 2009 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
The plantation in the postslavery imagination / Elizabeth Christine Russ.
Author
Russ, Elizabeth Christine.
ISBN
9780195377156 (alk. paper)
019537715X (alk. paper)
019537715X (alk. paper)
Publication Details
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.
Language
English
Description
x, 212 p. ; 25 cm.
Call Number
PQ7082.N7 R89 2009
Dewey Decimal Classification
863/.609353
Summary
"In a provocative new approach toward understanding transnational literary cultures, this study examines the specter of the plantation, that physical place most vividly associated with slavery in the Americas. For Elizabeth Russ, the plantation is not merely a literal location, but also a vexing rhetorical, ideological, and psychological trope through which intersecting histories of the New World are told. Through a series of precise, in-depth readings, Russ analyzes the discourse of the plantation through a number of suggestive pairings: male and female perspectives; U.S. and Spanish American traditions; and continental alongside island societies." "To chart comparative elements in the development of the postslavery imagination in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, Russ distinguishes between a modern and a postmodern imaginary. The former privileges a familiar plot of modernity: the traumatic transition from a local, largely agrarian order to an increasingly anonymous industrialized society. The latter, abandoning nostalgia toward the past, suggests a new history using the strategies of performance, such as witnessing, reticency, and traversal. Authors examined include The Twelve Southerners, Fernando Ortiz, Teresa de la Parra, Eudora Welty, Antonio Benitez Rojo, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, and Mayra Santos-Febres, among others." "Applying sharp analyses across a broad range of texts, Russ reveals how the language used to imagine communities influenced by the plantation has been gendered, racialized, and eroticized in ways that oppose the domination of an ever-shifting "North" while often reproducing the fundamental power divide. Her work moves beyond the North-South dichotomy that has often stymied scholarly work in Latin American studies and, importantly, provides a model for future hemispheric approaches."--BOOK JACKET.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Series
Imagining the Americas.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Modern plantation imaginaries
Race and romance in the Americas
Women, nation, and the "problematic of space"
Postmodern plantation imaginaries
New world silences, new world songs
Redressing the big house.
Modern plantation imaginaries
Race and romance in the Americas
Women, nation, and the "problematic of space"
Postmodern plantation imaginaries
New world silences, new world songs
Redressing the big house.