| Reading contemporary literatures - Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone - in dialogue with postcolonial and Marxian theory, some of the questions which animate the dissertation are as follows: Is blood more or less relevant in the face of the major displacements and migrations of our times? Are we becoming cosmopolitan world citizens, or does blood keep us anchored in more rooted identities, or in fact, are these necessarily opposites? Does blood help us reimagine concepts like "home", "family", "belonging" in a way that opposes a homogenizing, capitalist globalization? Or is it the other way around?;Beginning with a theoretical understanding of capitalism as historically and ideologically conditioned by a politics of blood, the analysis moves through the workings of this "bloody" capitalism in contemporary African and South Asian diasporas (Conde, McKnight, Lahiri, Sankaran); the emergence of multicultural democracy in the New South Africa in a globalizing economy (Mpe, Mda, Morgan); "anti-globalization" nationalism in Angola (Pepetela); "fundamentalisms", both Islamic and capitalist (Hamid); and finally, cosmopolitanism in Indian Ocean narratives (Vassanji, Ozeki). |
