Review
"Needham... contributes insights and arguments that are genuinely new. Striking a rare balance between theory and detailed criticism of literary texts..."
Book Description
Through close readings of works by writers like C. L. R. James, Salman Rushdie, Ama Ata Aidoo, Michelle Cliff, and Hanif Kureishi, Using the Master’s Tools examines instances of textual resistance elaborated within imperial/metropolitan epistemologies and ideologies. In her analysis, Anuradha Needham focuses especially on each writer’s historical location, personal and political affiliations, presumed audiences, and position on gender as integral contextual determinants of the strategies of textual resistance each deploys. Drawing on the extensive scholarship on “subaltern” and anti-colonial resistances in a number of disciplines, this book demonstrates the mutual interactions of (general) theory with (specific) practice such that each is enriched, extended, and refurbished.
About the Author
Anuradha Dingwaney Needham is Associate Professor of English at Oberlin College.
Using the Master's Tools: Resistance and the Literature of the African and South Asian Diasporas FROM THE PUBLISHER
Through close readings of works by writers C. L. R. James, Salman Rushdie, Ama Ata Aidoo, Michelle Cliff, and Hanif Kureishi, Using the Master's Tools examines instances of textual resistance elaborated within imperial/metropolitan epistemologies and ideologies. In her analysis, Anuradha Needham focuses especially on each writer's historical location, personal and political affiliations, presumed audiences, and position on gender as integral contextual determinants of the strategies of textual resistance each deploys. Drawing on the extensive scholarship on "subaltern" and anti-colonial resistances in a number of disciplines, this book demonstrates the mutual interactions of (general) theory with (specific) practice such that each is enriched, extended, and refurbished.
SYNOPSIS
Needham (English, Oberlin College) reads works by C.L.R. James, Salman Rushdie, Ama Ata Aidoo, Michelle Cliff, and Hanif Kureishi for instances of textual resistance to imperial/metropolitan epistemologies and ideologies, focusing on these writers' historical location, personal and political affiliations, presumed audiences, and position on gender as integral textual influences. With Needham's re-injection of biography into literary reading, the author is back, but perhaps without Foucault and Barthes feeling the need to roll over in their graves. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Art & Photography
Book Info
