Under Postcolonial Eyes

Figuring the "jew" in Contemporary British Writing

Efraim Sicher, Linda Weinhouse

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780803245037
• eBook ISBN: 9780803245303
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In the Western literary tradition, the "jew" has long been a figure of ethnic exclusion and social isolation—the wanderer, the scapegoat, the alien. But it is no longer clear where a perennial outsider belongs. This provocative study of contemporary British writing points to the figure of the "jew" as the litmus test of multicultural society. Efraim Sicher and Linda Weinhouse examine the "jew" as a cultural construction distinct from the "Jewishness" of literary characters in novels by, among others, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Doris Lessing, Monica Ali, Caryl Philips, and Zadie Smith, as well as contemporary art and film.

Here the image of the "jew" emerges in all its ambivalence, from postcolonial migrant and modern everyman to more traditional representations of the conspirator and malefactor. The multicultural discourses of ethnic and racial hybridity reflect dissolution of national and personal identities, yet the search for transnational, cultural forms conceals both the acceptance of marginal South Asian, Caribbean, and Jewish voices as well as the danger of resurgent antisemitic tropes. Innovative in its contextualization of the "jew" in the multiculturalism debate in contemporary Britain, Under Postcolonial Eyes: Figuring the "jew" in Contemporary British Writing analyzes the narrative of identities in a globalized culture and offers new interpretations of postmodern classics.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Under Colonial Eyes: Doris Lessing and the Jews
• 2. Under Postcolonial Eyes: Baumgartner’s Bombay
• 3. Hybridity’s Children: Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie
• 4. The Color of Shylock: Caryl Phillips
• 5. Down Cultural Memory Lane: Ali, Lichtenstein, and Gavron
• 6. The Postmodern Jew
• 7. Radically Jewish
• Bibliography
• Index