TY - BOOK ID - 8601064 TI - Under postcolonial eyes : figuring the ʻʻJewʼʼ in contemporary British writing AU - Sicher, Efraim AU - Weinhouse, Linda PY - 2012 SN - 9780803245037 PB - Lincoln London : University of Nebraska Press, DB - UniCat KW - English literature KW - Jews in literature. KW - Postcolonialism KW - Judaism and literature KW - Postmodernism (Literature) KW - Juifs KW - Postcolonialisme KW - Littérature anglaise KW - Postmodernisme et littérature KW - History and criticism. KW - Dans la littérature KW - Histoire et critique KW - Postmodernisme et littérature. KW - Dans la littérature. KW - Histoire et critique. KW - Littérature anglaise KW - Postmodernisme et littérature. KW - Dans la littérature. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:8601064 AB - 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 acceptance of marginal South Asian, Caribbean, or Jewish voices and the danger of resurgent anti-semitic tropes. Innovative in its contextualization of the "jew" in the multiculturalism debate in contemporary Britain, Under Postcolonial Eyes analyzes the narrative of identities in a globalized culture and offers new interpretations of postmodern classics. ER -