This book is the record of a colloquium held at Churchill College, Cambridge. It pursues lines of discussion radiating out from the core theme of the power of the image (understood in its pictorial, iconic, sensory and verbal senses). Writers, scholars and artists are grouped in pairs representing the two language-cultures (English and French). Central topics covered include the manifold ways in which our readings of pictorial images old and contemporary can bridge cultures, language politics and the politics of culture, the limitless and instructive senses of the concept of the ‘word’, the relation between orality and the written text, the implications of the act of writing, history and opera, the word in theatre, the influence of the Nobel Prize.... The terms of discussion universally urbane, effortlessly wide-ranging and deeply probing. Most importantly – and a reminder of how best to ensure literate wisdom in intercultural debate – is the fact that the contributors gathered here have avoided all ‘pre-packaging’ of their reflections in the shibboleth ‘discourses' (whether Freudian, poststructuralist, postmodern or postcolonial) of our time. Contributors are: Anthony Kwame Appiah, Biyi Bandele, Jacques Chevrier, Tim Cribb, Irène d’Almeida, Casimir d’Angelo, Assia Djebar, Akin Euba, Christiane Fioupou, Lorna Goodison, Wilson Harris, Marika Hedin, Gerard Houghton, Abiola Irele, Anny King, John Kinsella, Henri Lopés, Daniel Maximin, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Ato Quayson, Alain Ricard, Tracy Ryan, Julien Sinzogan, Alioune Sow, Wole Soyinka, George Steiner, Véronique Tadjo, Maria Tippett, Olabiyi Yaï

This special issue of differences celebrates the work of the contemporary feminist literary critic and theorist Barbara Johnson, whose work has been revolutionary in foregrounding concepts of "difference." Johnson's is a unique method of literary reading in which literature becomes, in her words, "a mode of cultural work, the work of giving-to-read those impossible contradictions that cannot yet be spoken." The contributors to this issue recognize that one of Johnson's primary gifts to literary studies is her ability to teach theoretical insights, not in a pedagogically prescriptive or didactic way, but through her exquisitely close readings of texts that illustrate the force of theory and language in practice. The first half of the issue comprises essays in which scholars influenced by Johnson offer close readings of texts ranging from Sandra Cisneros's Carmelo to Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever" to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Each of the remaining essays is marked by the intimate voice of its author offering a reflective tribute to Johnson's thought and teaching. Contributors. Lauren Berlant, Rachel Bowlby, Bill Brown, Mary Wilson Carpenter, Pamela Caughie, Lee Edelman, Jane Gallop, Bill Johnson González, Deborah Jenson, Lili Porten, Avital Ronell, Mary Helen Washington

This book explores in depth the uses of language in Wole Soyinka’s plays, poetry and prose. The author approaches Soyinka’s works through meticulous close readings, giving the writer his due by capturing the complexities, ambiguities, and nuances of his language.

In Discourses of Empire and Commonwealth a range of prominent writers and critics reflect on the legacy of imperialism and the role of writers in forging a new, more cosmopolitan identity. The contributors, writing about a wide range of countries, affirm the freedom of the human spirit, even within unjust or oppressive social systems. They show the power of words to illuminate injustices and unite different peoples. Salman Rushdie famously declared that Commonwealth Literature has had its day: this book provides a vital antidote to this idea. Editors Sandra Robinson and Alastair Niven have put together this mixture of personal reflections, critical overviews, historical re-evaluations and creative works to illustrate the vitality of this genre.

This collection has one central theoretical focus, viz. stock-taking essays on the present and future status of postcolonialism, transculturalism, nationalism, and globalization. These are complemented by ‘special’ angles of entry (e.g. ‘dharmic ethics’) and by considerations of the global impress of technology (African literary studies and the Internet). Further essays have a focus on literary-cultural studies in Australia (the South Asian experience) and New Zealand (ecopoetics; a Central European émigrée perspective on the nation; the unravelling of literary nationalism; transplantation and the trope of translation). The thematic umbrella, finally, covers studies of such topics as translation and interculturalism (the transcendental in Australian and Indian fiction; African Shakespeares; Canadian narrative and First-Nations story templates); anglophone / francophone relations (the writing and rewriting of crime fiction in Africa and the USA; utopian fiction in Quebec); and syncretism in post-apartheid South African theatre. Some of the authors treated in detail are: Janet Frame; Kapka Kassabova; Elizabeth Knox; Annamarie Jagose; Denys Trussell; David Malouf; Patrick White; Yasmine Gooneratne; Raja Rao; Robert Kroetsch; Thomas King; Chester Himes; Julius Nyerere; Ayi Kwei Armah; Léopold Sédar Senghor; Simon Njami; Abourahman Waberi; Lueen Conning; Nuruddin Farah; Athol Fugard; Frantz Fanon; Julia Kristeva; Shakespeare. The collection is rounded off by creative writing (prose, poetry, and drama) by Bernard Cohen, Jan Kemp, Vincent O’Sullivan, Andrew Sant, and Sujay Sood.

A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.