Between Anticolonial Worldmaking and International Human Rights
Narrating Violence and Redress in the Postcolonial Civil War Novel
In: Journal of World LiteratureSearch for other papers by Arielle Stambler in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This essay examines the productive tensions between human rights and postcolonialism by turning to three civil war novels: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, and Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love. Each text brings together a recurring set of characters: a metropolitan outsider, a bicultural mediator, and an underclass figure. These trios, in turn, generate narrative products – a book (Adichie), a sculpture (Ondaatje), and an oral tale (Forna) – that offer new frameworks for narrating violence and redress. By exploring what comes of these trios’ generative entanglements with each other, the novels also model how scholars of world and postcolonial literature might develop both critical and constructive accounts of human rights.
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Between Anticolonial Worldmaking and International Human Rights
Narrating Violence and Redress in the Postcolonial Civil War Novel
In: Journal of World LiteratureSearch for other papers by Arielle Stambler in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This essay examines the productive tensions between human rights and postcolonialism by turning to three civil war novels: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, and Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love. Each text brings together a recurring set of characters: a metropolitan outsider, a bicultural mediator, and an underclass figure. These trios, in turn, generate narrative products – a book (Adichie), a sculpture (Ondaatje), and an oral tale (Forna) – that offer new frameworks for narrating violence and redress. By exploring what comes of these trios’ generative entanglements with each other, the novels also model how scholars of world and postcolonial literature might develop both critical and constructive accounts of human rights.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 45 | 45 | 45 |
| Full Text Views | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 12 | 12 | 12 |
