Blockseminar Trauma Exile and Migration in Contemporary British Fiction

The mass migration into Britain from the second half of the twentieth century onwards has resulted in a culturally and ethnically diverse social situation that Caryl Philips has characterised as ‘helpless heterogeneity’. Literary and cultural theory has variously responded to this condition: while postcolonial theory has often regarded the migrants’ hybridity as the archetype of postmodern identity per se, more recent reconfigurations of the postcolonial paradigm emphasise the inherent tensions and contradictions of postcolonial subjectivities and the traumatising potential of the experience of migration. Contemporary fiction by British authors of various ethnic and socio-cultural backgrounds negotiates the relevance of categories such as ethnicity, culture, history, gender and class for personal and group identity and variously configures the experiences of exile, migration and diaspora. This course seeks to examine the ways in which writers create a complex and multifaceted vision of contemporary Britain, how their texts problematise the notion of multiculturalism and may even ask us to rethink the validity of widespread theoretical paradigms. Set texts: Andrea Levy, Small Island (1997). London: Review, 2004. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000). London: Penguin, 2002. Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers (2004). London: Faber & Faber, 2004. A reader with additional texts will also be made available. Anglistik Universität Duisburg-Essen WS 2012/13 LBK, Lehramt an Berufskollegs Professorin Plummer Patricia