Helen Davies

Sarah Ilott

This edited collection explores the representations of identity in comedy and interrogates the ways in which “humorous” constructions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, class and disability raise serious issues about privilege, agency and oppression in popular culture. Should there be limits to free speech when humour is aimed at marginalised social groups? What are the limits of free speech when comedy pokes fun at those who hold social power? Can taboo joking be used towards politically progressive ends? Can stereotypes be mocked through their re-invocation? Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak breaks new theoretical ground by demonstrating how the way people are represented mediates the triadic relationship set up in comedy between teller, audience and butt of the joke. By bringing together a selection of essays from international scholars, this study unpacks and examines the dynamic role that humour plays in making and remaking identity and power relations in culture and society.

Mocking the Weak

Comedy and the Politics of Representation

This study analyses four new genres of literature and film that have evolved to accommodate and negotiate the changing face of postcolonial Britain since 1990: British Muslim Bildungsromane, gothic tales of postcolonial England, the subcultural urban novel and multicultural British comedy.

Shifting the Boundaries

New Postcolonial British Genres

Ana Cristina Mendes

Lucinda Newns

This collection brings together new critical approaches to diaspora studies, branching out to areas such as literary studies, visual culture, and museum studies, and explores them in relation to a variety of fictional works, cultural traditions, theoretical paradigms, and geo-political contexts.

Cultural and Literary Approaches

New Directions in Diaspora Studies

MS Helen Davies

Chloe Buckley

This collection develops a body of research around critically acclaimed author Helen Oyeyemi, putting her in dialogue with other contemporary writers and tracing her relationship with other works and literary traditions. Spanning the settings and cultural traditions of Britain, Nigeria, and the Caribbean, her work highlights the interconnected histories and cultures wrought by multiple waves of enslavement, colonization, and migration. Oyeyemi's work engages in an innovative way with gothic literature, reworking the tropes of a Western Gothic tradition in order to examine the fraught process of establishing identity in a postcolonial context. She is also a trouble-making feminist voice, employing feminist strategies to rewrite genres, parody literary forms, and critique the characterization of 'woman' in literature. Oyeyemi's oeuvre marks a new direction in postcolonial studies: The binarizing model of writing back famously advocated in Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin's seminal study - The Empire Writes Back (1989) - does not hold for her work. Neither does Oyeyemi's work celebrate the utopian potential of what Homi Bhabha terms 'Third Spaces' in multicultural societies. Instead, Oyeyemi foregrounds enduring colonial legacies referenced through the physical and psychological trauma associated with migration, displacement, racism, and contested national identities. This collection brings together a range of intersecting critical approaches in a timely investigation of Oyeyemi's literary output.

Sarah Ilott

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