Ebook: Imaginary Ethnographies: Literature, Culture, and Subjectivity
Author: Gabriele Schwab
- Tags: Psychoanalysis, Psychology & Counseling, Health Fitness & Dieting, Criticism & Theory, History & Criticism, Literature & Fiction, Movements & Periods, Ancient & Classical, Arthurian Romance, Beat Generation, Feminist, Gothic & Romantic, LGBT, Medieval, Modern, Modernism, Postmodernism, Renaissance, Shakespeare, Surrealism, Victorian, History & Criticism, Literature & Fiction, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Criticism, Philosophy, Politics & Social Sciences, Deconstruction, Movements, Philosophy, Politics & Social Sciences, Cultur
- Year: 2012
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Language: English
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Schwab's study draws on anthropology, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis to trace literature's profound impact on the cultural imaginary. Following a new interpretation of Derrida's and Lévi-Strauss's famous controversy over the indigenous Nambikwara, Schwab explores the vicissitudes of "traveling literature" through novels and films that fashion a cross-cultural imaginary. She also examines the intricate links between colonialism, cannibalism, melancholia, the fate of disenfranchised children under the forces of globalization, and the intertwinement of property and personhood in the neoliberal imaginary. Schwab concludes with an exploration of discourses on the posthuman, using Samuel Beckett's "The Lost Ones" and its depiction of a future lived under the conditions of minimal life. Drawing on a wide range of theories, Schwab engages the productive intersections between literary studies and anthropology, underscoring the power of literature to shape culture, subjectivity, and life.