In this Book
University of Minnesota Press
- Calibrations: Reading For The Social
- Book
- 2003
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
- Series: Public Worlds
summary
Ato Quayson explores a practice of reading that oscillates rapidly between domains—the literary-aesthetic, the social, the cultural, and the political—in order to uncover the mutually illuminating nature of these domains. He does this not to assert the often repeated postmodernist view that there is nothing outside the text, but to outline a method of reading he calls calibrations: a form of close reading of literature with what lies beyond it as a way of understanding structures of transformation, process, and contradiction that inform both literature and society.
Quayson surveys a wide array of texts—ranging from Bob Marley lyrics, Toni Morrison’s work, Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, and Althusser’s reflections on political economy—and treats a broad range of themes: the comparative structures of alienation in literature and anthropology, cultural heroism as a trope in African society and politics, literary tragedy as a template for reading the life and activism of Ken Saro-Wiwa, trauma and the status of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa, representations of physical disability, and the clash between enchanted and disenchanted time in postcolonial texts.
Quayson surveys a wide array of texts—ranging from Bob Marley lyrics, Toni Morrison’s work, Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, and Althusser’s reflections on political economy—and treats a broad range of themes: the comparative structures of alienation in literature and anthropology, cultural heroism as a trope in African society and politics, literary tragedy as a template for reading the life and activism of Ken Saro-Wiwa, trauma and the status of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa, representations of physical disability, and the clash between enchanted and disenchanted time in postcolonial texts.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- 5 Disability and Contingency
- pp. 99-124
- 6 Literature and the Parables of Time
- pp. 125-152
- Bibliography
- pp. 165-174
- About the Author
- p. 180
Additional Information
ISBN
9780816693030
Related ISBN(s)
9780816638406
MARC Record
OCLC
191930392
Pages
224
Launched on MUSE
2015-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No