"Bewes book constitutes a welcome and original intervention in postcolonial theory, and the questions he asks go to the heart of the postcolonial dilemma. . . . These questions are crucial, and Bewes' vision of 'a writing freed from the shaming, subtractive consciousness of a being who writes' surely points us in the right direction."--Ursula Kluwick, Project Muse
"I am extraordinarily impressed by this book's forcefulness of argument and originality. This compelling book deserves to be read widely, not only by specialists conversant with postcolonial and critical theory, but also by committed readers who are interested in the postcolonial novel and the politics of writing after colonialism. It is a true pleasure to read."--Rebecca Walkowitz, Rutgers University
"This is an exceptional book. Bewes has written the theory of the contemporary novel that literary scholars have been craving, and he has written a work of literary criticism that explains why scholars across the disciplines ought to be reading contemporary fiction if they wish to understand the twentieth century."--John Marx, University of California, Davis
"In arguing that shame takes a material form in literature, this book is a breakthrough. Bewes provides a genuine analysis of the aesthetics and ethics of postcolonial writing and makes his case pointedly. For these reasons, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of postcolonial theory, critical and literary theory, global Anglophone writing, and the ethics of the literary form."--Emily Apter, New York University
"Bewes has established himself as a leading theorist of negative affect. . . . Bewes's account of the materialization of shame that is less communicative than affective, and thus potentially transformative, should interest readers across the humanities and social sciences."--Choice
"Whether one finds that Bewes's move to the structural level opens up new horizons for literary study or abstracts too decisively from historical situatedness will depend on one's theoretical inclinations. For readers of either proclivity, however, his intelligent and original book is likely to elicit a lively and engaged response."--Michael Rothberg, Project Muse
"Compelling, probing, and conceptually masterful."--David James, Twentieth-Century Literature
"There is much to be said in praise of Bewes' achievement in this work. The theoretical structure he proposes is outlined with admirable clarity in its opening sections, in clear prose that should be a model for academic writing. Each chapter refines and embellishes this theoretical structure, building logically on the work of preceding chapters and towards those that follow. Each theoretical innovation is elucidated through a textual encounter, and in each case the result is a strikingly original reading of a canonical postcolonial novel. . . . What he provides us with here is nothing less than a groundbreaking new theory of the novel."--Tom Langley, Interventions
"Few books published recently in the field of postcolonial studies can rival the virtuosic brilliance of Timothy Bewes' The Event of Postcolonial Shame. Dense, challenging and thought-provoking, the work's dazzling erudition, which combines highly inventive readings of an impressive array of philosophers, writers, literary and cinematic texts, opens new critical inroads into the relation between ethics and aesthetics. . . . By framing and asking a set of fresh and inventive ones, Timothy Bewes challenges us with the task of creating a more rigorous intellectual engagement with the aesthetics and ethics of postcoloniality. The Event of Postcolonial Shame is a remarkable and stunning work of scholarship."--Raji Vallury, New Formations Part One: The Form of Shame Chapter Two: Shame, Ventriloquy, and the Problem of the Cliché: Caryl Phillips 49 Part Two: The Time of Shame Chapter Four: Shame and Revolutionary Betrayal: Joseph Conrad, Chapter Five: The Event of Shame in J. M. Coetzee 137 Chapter Six: Shame and Subtraction: Towards Postcolonial Writing 164 Notes 193
Prologue 1
Chapter One: Shame as Form 11
Form and Disjunction: A Recent History 15
Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved 20
Three Preliminary Theses 23
Postcolonial Shame and the Novel 41
Precipitation of Shame 53
The Materiality of Postcolonial Shame 56
Cambridge and Crossing the River 61
The Poetics of Impossibility 66
Chapter Three: The Shame of Belatedness: Late Style in V. S. Naipaul 75
Being and Belatedness 78
Late Style in Adorno 82
Liber solemnis: The Enigma of Arrival 87
Crystal of Shame: The Mimic Men 94
Ng?g? wa Thiong'o, Zoë Wicomb 100
Hegel: Text as Antitext 103
Joseph Conrad: Form as the Evacuation of Form 108
Ng?g? wa Thiong'o: The Imminence of Betrayal 115
Zoë Wicomb: The Difference of the Same 123
Alain Badiou: Subtraction versus Realization 128
Part Three: The Event of Shame
The Problem of "Agency" 138
Two Shames in Coetzee 142
Diary of a Bad Year 146
The New Direction 150
Positively White: Slow Man and Corporeal Shame 153
The Origins of This Book: Michel Leiris 167
Deleuze and Sartre 169
Subtraction 173
Louis Malle's L'Inde fantôme 178
Towards Postcolonial Writing 187
Index 219
Berserk 15
Pepe 01