Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/9112
Appears in Collections:Literature and Languages Book Chapters and Sections
Title: That's maybe where I come from but that’s not how I read: Diaspora, Location and Reading Identities
Author(s): Benwell, Bethan
Procter, James
Robinson, Gemma
Contact Email: b.m.benwell@stir.ac.uk
Editor(s): Benwell, Bethan
Procter, James
Robinson, Gemma
Citation: Benwell B, Procter J & Robinson G (2012) That's maybe where I come from but that’s not how I read: Diaspora, Location and Reading Identities. In: Benwell B, Procter J & Robinson G (eds.) Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception. Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures, 37. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis (Routledge), pp. 43-56. https://www.routledge.com/Postcolonial-Audiences-Readers-Viewers-and-Reception-1st-Edition/Benwell-Procter-Robinson/p/book/9780415888714
Keywords: Diaspora
Reading groups
Reception
Location
Issue Date: Feb-2012
Date Deposited: 14-Sep-2012
Series/Report no.: Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures, 37
Abstract: First paragraph: The historical neglect of readers within the field of postcolonial studies has produced what C. L. Innes suggests is a reductive and presumptuous idea of  "the reader": "most critical analyses of postcolonial writing implicitly or explicitly presume that the reader is either a member of the writer's nation, as in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (1983) . . . or, more frequently, a generalized cosmopolitan Westerner"; even in those accounts that do exist "there is little differentiation between different kinds of Western reader" (2007, 200). Much of the haziness around readers here hinges upon commonsense assumptions about the location of reading, whether it is conceived in terms of national affiliation or in more generalised, global and diasporic terms of cosmopolitan consumption in "the" West. In what follows we explore some of the findings of a recent project that attempted to firm up current conceptions of readership by investigating how readers in a series of geographically dispersed locations made sense of the same, or similar works of fiction associated with postcolonial or diaspora writing. These works included canonical classics such as Things Fall Apart (1958), as well as proto-canonical contemporary works such as White Teeth (2001), experimental writers like Junot Diaz and more mainstream realist novelists like Andrea Levy and Monica Ali, poetry and short fiction, as well as novels, and prescribed works as well as books selected by the individual groups themselves. By recording and transcribing a series of isolated book group readings of these texts in Africa (Lagos, Kano, Nigeria; Tetuan, Morocco), India (New Delhi), Canada (Kingston), the Caribbean (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Kingston, Jamaica) and across the UK (from Cornwall to Glasgow), this project asked how (if at all) the reception of the same book differs according to the place in which it is read.
Rights: Copyright 2012 From Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception edited by Bethan Benwell, James Procter, and Gemma Robinson. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc.
URL: https://www.routledge.com/Postcolonial-Audiences-Readers-Viewers-and-Reception-1st-Edition/Benwell-Procter-Robinson/p/book/9780415888714

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