V.G. Julie Rajan

Atreyee Phukan

The essays in South Asia and Its Others: Reading the "Exotic" reveal fresh perspectives on the notion of exoticism in South Asia, and also challenge and extend existing scholarship in the broader discourse of what constitutes South Asia. Significantly, the anthology considers how the phenomenon of "exoticization" may be interpreted as a strategic methodology utilized by writers of South Asian descent to examine critically both the post-colonialist ramifications of casteism, religious intolerance, and gender violence across differing cultural contexts within the region, and how current perceptions of "native" and "diasporic" South Asian subjects problematize ideologies of authenticity across Western-Eastern divides. The papers in this collection show how authors of South Asian ethnicity construct their own version of an "exotic" South Asia globally and the colonialist discourse of "exocitism" is employed as a discursive tool that uncovers the ambiguity that continues to mark the marginality of identities even today.

Reading the “Exotic”

South Asia and its Others

How various mythologies challenge, enable, and inspire women artists and activists across the globe to communicate personal and historical experiences of violence is the central concern of this collection. Beginning with the observation that twentieth- and twenty-first century female writers and artists often use myth to represent their social and artistic struggles, the distinguished international scholars and writers consider mythic fabulations as spaces for contested meanings and resistant readings. The identified resistance of the mythic material to repression-working, as it were, in opposition to another celebrated drive/role of myth, that of containment-makes the use of myth particularly stimulating for twentieth-century and contemporary female artists; and it is an interest in the aesthetic and political consequences of such resistances that animates this book. Exemplifying the diverse types of engagement with myth and femininity, literary criticism, discussions of film and art, artwork, as well as original creative writing, could all be found within the boundaries of this innovative volume. Femininity, myth, and violence are here explored in contexts such as female mythopoiesis in the early twentieth century; the politics of representation in contemporary writing; revision of old myths; and creation of new myths in multicultural female experiences. Keeping the focus on the actual works of art, the editors and contributors offer scholars and teachers an inclusive way to approach literature and the arts that avoids the limits imposed by genre or national and regional boundaries.

New Cassandras

Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text

Sanja Bahun

Violence and Gender in the Globalized World expands the critical picture of gender and violence in the age of globalization by introducing a variety of uncommonly discussed geo-political sites and dynamics. The volume hosts methodologically and disciplinarily diverse contributions from around the world, discussing various contexts including Chechnya, Germany, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Syria, South Africa, the United States, and the Internet. Bringing together scholars’ and activists’ historicized and site-specific perspectives, this book bridges the gap between theory and practice concerning violence, gender, and agency. In this revised and updated edition, the scope of inquiry is expanded to incorporate phenomena that have recently come to the forefront of public and scholarly scrutiny, such as Internet-based discourses of violence, female suicide bombers, and the Islamic State’s violence against women. At the same time, new data and developments are brought to bear on earlier discussions of violence against women across the globe in order to bring them fully up to date. With an international team of contributors, comprising eminent scholars, activists and policy-makers, this volume will be of interest to anyone conducting research in the areas of gender and sexuality, human rights, cultural studies, law, sociology, political science, history, post-colonialism and colonialism, anthropology, philosophy and religion.

The Intimate and the Extimate

Violence and Gender in the Globalized World

Sanja Bahun-Radunović

From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women’s Aesthetic Production is an innovative collection of essays on female aesthetic production and myth, examining the ways in which women artists and writers utilize myth to negotiate their perceptions of feminine identity and feminine representation in an increasingly complex and culturally hybrid world. The featured essays and artistic contributions address a variety of contemporary female productions, including literature, performance, and visual art, in a markedly global scope. Representing a wide range of cultures, languages, geographic locales, and social contexts—from Jewish-Hindu and Kenyan-German, through Irish, Italian, American, to Vietnamese folktales—this diversified selection underscores the agency of “the feminine gaze” across a historical and geopolitical span, a gaze through which myths from various cultures and different cultural amalgams speak to us with force and with significance. The potency of this gaze is linked to the potential of myth simultaneously to encompass and compress history, and to offer the result as a backdrop against which the move from word to canvas—or from a mythic tale to its aesthetic appropriation—is performed in female aesthetic production.

V.G. Julie Rajan

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