Globalisation and Contemporaneity: The Humanities and Hyphenated Narratives (eBook)

This collection, Globalisation and Contemporaneity : The Humanities and Hyphenated Narratives, comprises 11 critical essays written to honour a woman, a scholar and a mentor whose very roots, school and professional careers, as well as marital and family lives portray the hybridity typical of globalisation. The essays probe into the consequences of global flows on culture, identity and language in the humanities. Put simply, globalisation can be perceived as the “cross-national flows of goods, investment, production and technology” which, according to the stalwarts of globalisation, result in a new world order. This new world order is one that is no longer configured to acknowledge nations as having their own sovereign space, exclusive culture, specific language and citizens with well-defined and closed identities. This book does not seek to get into the globalisation debate amongst the hyperglobalisers, the sceptics and the transformationalists. Rather, it espouses the view that globalisation (however old theconcept might be considered to be) is more than a cliché in the contemporary world as its effects are unavoidably glaring in every area of human life. It is this impact that globalisation has had on the humanities, especially on language and literature, that the critical essays in this collection attempt to investigate.