Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: nostalgia, ethics, and contemporary Anglophone literature
- 1 Narratives of return: locating ethics in the age of globalization
- 2 Nostalgia and narrative ethics in Caribbean literature
- 3 “Loss was in the order of things”: recalling loss, reclaiming place in Native American fiction
- 4 Refiguring national character: the remains of the British estate novel
- 5 Appeasing an embittered history: trauma and nationhood in the writings of Achebe and Soyinka
- Conclusion: nostalgia and its futures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Narratives of return: locating ethics in the age of globalization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: nostalgia, ethics, and contemporary Anglophone literature
- 1 Narratives of return: locating ethics in the age of globalization
- 2 Nostalgia and narrative ethics in Caribbean literature
- 3 “Loss was in the order of things”: recalling loss, reclaiming place in Native American fiction
- 4 Refiguring national character: the remains of the British estate novel
- 5 Appeasing an embittered history: trauma and nationhood in the writings of Achebe and Soyinka
- Conclusion: nostalgia and its futures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
When it comes to being ethical, there is no escaping the imperative of place.
– Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into PlaceWhere I was before I came here, that place is real. It's never going away. Even if the whole farm – every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there – you who never was there – if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over – over and done with – it's going to always be there waiting for you.
– Toni Morrison, BelovedIn the age of supersonic travel and virtual highways, place has reemerged as a central social and philosophical concern. Or one might at least get this impression from scanning the academic book lists in the humanities and social sciences since the early 1990s. A term previously dismissed as embodying stasis and conservative claims of authenticity now graces the titles of an impressive range of texts with widely varying politics and methodologies. Philosopher Edward S. Casey's Getting Back into Place, cultural geographer Doreen Massey's Space, Place and Gender, literary scholar Ian Baucom's Out of Place, and anthropologists Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson's edited volume Culture, Power, Place represent only a small sample of this phenomenon.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethics and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Novel , pp. 20 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005