Title: Being in the World: Literary Practice and Pedagogy in Global Times
Abstract: This article examines the implications of recent developments in postcolonial theory and globalization studies for literary pedagogy. I argue for a critical cosmopolitan pedagogy that nourishes the creation of alternative imaginaries and uses literature to teach students to engage more fully with the world and provide two examples of how this might be enacted. The first centers on the idea that, in a globalized world, literary pedagogy cannot avoid dealing with texts translated into English from other languages. Using the global, multicultural city-state of Singapore as a case in point, I argue that teaching translated texts can provide minority perspectives erased by official history and be a strategic way of interrogating the hegemony of the Anglophone segment of the population and, historically, the English-educated class. The second example discusses Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and suggests pedagogical approaches that help the text in its work of estranging the reader. Ultimately, a literary pedagogy that takes the question of perspective seriously can help readers and students resist neoliberal capitalism’s emphasis on the management of the self in the service of markets in favor of a more politicized global subject fully committed to engaging the world.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot