Literature Program and Dean of the College Present
A Home at the End of Empire: Tropes of Lateness in James Joyce and V. S. Naipaul
Monday, February 25, 2019
RKC 103
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Philip Tai-Hang Tsang, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati
The narrative of the “end of empire” has conditioned the ways we think about British imperialism and its legacy. But how did colonial subjects comprehend the demise of an empire that did not belong to them? In this talk, I contend that the British Empire has left behind not only an abundance of material relics but also an inventory of feelings and attachments that could not be easily relinquished. For many peripheral writers whose subjectivities were shaped by imperial cultures and institutions, empire deferred its proper ending even after British rule had officially ended. Their works exhibit what I call “lateness,” a nonchronological, retrogressive experience of time specific to the imperial periphery. Lateness arrests the linear progression from colonial to postcolonial, from empire to nation, and from subject to citizen. To illustrate lateness as a historical experience and an aesthetic form, I carry out a comparative reading of the “Ithaca” episode in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961). Published on the eve of decolonization, both novels look back to the imperial past as the site of a tense interplay of attachment and exclusion. By approaching the British Empire as a structure of desire that outlived its political lifespan, this talk gives greater precision to the temporal dimension of imperialism, and offers a new framework for the periodization of 20th-century anglophone literature.For more information, call 845-758-7203, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: RKC 103