L'Irruption des
«autres» explores the problem of intercultural
relations. Interculturality is something not only
scholars in the humanities and the social sciences
deal with, but it also increasingly affects
administrators, politicians, educators, and to some
extent all members of society. People confront
problems that have to do with the ways of
understanding and managing intercultural relationships
in today's societies - societies that are becoming
more complex locally while, on the other hand,
interrelations at a global level unceasingly increase.
L'irruption des «autres», as
suggested by its title, deals precisely with the
inscription of cultural diversity in contemporary
literature and, more concretely, the different moments
in which the irruption of the «others» took place.
This work identifies the rich variety of these texts
with the term «calibanesque discourse», for the
authors adopt, more or less explicitly, the viewpoint
of Caliban, the colonial subject par excellence,
instead of Prospero's, no longer considered the
exponent of civilization but as the epitome of
imperialism.
L'Irruption des
«autres» studies three phenomena pertaining to
precise geographical and cultural areas: the Chicano
movement, discourses of identity and resistance in the
French-Creole Caribbean (négritude, antillanité,
créolité), and Latin-American indigenismo.
Giménez Micó's critical position appears in clear
confrontation with diverse essentialist concepcions of
identity, as well as with antagonistic positions that
relativize identity to the extent of making it
disappear as an object of study.
The
transdisciplinary approach of this work welcomes
contributions from a large variety of schools and
disciplines in the humanities as well as in the social
sciences: literature, philosophy, social psychology,
cultural studies, discourse analysis, hermeneutics,
semiotics, sociocriticism, cultural studies, etc. Due
to its interdisciplinary scope, L'irruption des
«autres» is not only addressed to a specialized
audience. |
Photo: Anne Giguère
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José Antonio
Giménez Micó is a Professor of Spanish and
Latin-American Studies at Concordia
University, Montreal, and an author of
several works on Latin-American, Caribbean,
Spanish and French literatures, as well as
on semiotics, hermeneutics, and cultural
studies. Giménez Micó (M.A. in Hispanic
Studies and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature,
Université de Montréal, 1992 and 1996;
invited postdoctoral scholar ath the
Northrop Frye Centre and the Centre for
Comparative Literature, University of
Toronto, 1996-1997) has taught comparative
literature in the Université de Montréal and
Latin-American literatures in the University
of Calgary. |
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