You are cordially invited to a talk by Ashwin Bajaj (University of California, Irvine) hosted by the Department of English Language and Literature.<\/p>\n
Date: Wednesday, February 12,
\nTime: 5:30 pm (Reception starts at 5 pm)
\nRoom: H 232<\/p>\n
Title: \u201cRedeeming Failed States: Allegory and the National Imagination\u201d<\/p>\n
Abstract: My talk, \u201cRedeeming Failed States: Allegory and the Literary Imagination,\u201d begins by returning to the concluding section of Marx\u2019s Capital in order to uncover two issues relevant to thinking post-coloniality: namely, difference and origin. I make the case that \u201cfailed states\u201d are, at a spatial level, the result of a constitutive superfluity that inheres to capital\u2019s production and preservation of difference. I will then suggest that Nuruddin Farah\u2019s 1986 novel, Maps, presents a novelisation of the failed-state. I argue that even while unwaveringly depicting the social strife and disrepair afflicting Somalia, however, the text\u2019s allegorical structure of constantly returning to its own origins implicitly repudiates UN-style assessments or, indeed, readings of the country in the presentist terms of a \u201cfailed state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biographical note: Ashwin Bajaj is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. He specializes in postcolonial and decolonial literatures, novel theory, and critical theory. His work has appeared in NOVEL and Studies in the Novel and is forthcoming in Postmodern Culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You are cordially invited to a talk by Ashwin Bajaj (University of California, Irvine) hosted by the Department of English Language and Literature. Date: Wednesday, February 12, Time: 5:30 pm (Reception starts at 5 pm) Room: H 232 Title: \u201cRedeeming Failed States: Allegory and the National Imagination\u201d Abstract: My talk, [\u2026] <\/p>\n