In/justice and necro-natality in Edwidge Danticat’s <i>Brother, I’m Dying</i>

Knepper, Wendy

doi:10.1177/0021989412447491

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…While Dog Boy is set in Europe, it portrays spaces that bear a close resemblance to postcolonial spaces of exception, where geographical zones are excluded from the rule of law and sovereign power is not limited by statutes. The idea of bare life has been used to read postcolonial texts, such as Kim Scott’s Benang (West-Pavlov, 2011) and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying (Knepper, 2012). Inclusion and exclusion of people can be mapped onto physical spaces.…”

Section: Closed Paths and Inscriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “unimaginable border” and bare life in Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy

Neave

2017

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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This article offers a consideration of the figure of the feral child in Australian writer Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy (2009), a novel based on stories circulating in the media about children raised by dogs in post-perestroika Russia. The book was praised for its exploration of the liminal space occupied by its protagonist, Romochka, the ecocritical potential in the idea of ferality, and its grimly realistic portrayal of both Romochka’s privations and the comfort offered by the company and loyalty of dogs. I read the novel less optimistically, through Giorgio Agamben’s conception of “bare life” and the metaphorical instrument of its production, the anthropological machine as described in The Open: Man and Animal. Romochka is excluded from political life and from legal protection, yet is subject to state intervention. Further, I argue that the novel is engaged in Australian and international debates about people excluded from political life and from the protection of the law, such as the homeless and refugees, who are nonetheless exposed to state power and surveillance.

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Section: Closed Paths and Inscriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “unimaginable border” and bare life in Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy

Neave

2017

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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“…Para ser justo, habrá que decir que comparten semejanzas y diferencias entre sí, en lo que concierne a sus articulaciones teóricas-críticas y objetos de estudio. Por citar un ejemplo, los tres primeros trabajos abordan autores(as) distintos a Danticat; el último, analizaBrother I'm dying, de la escritora en cuestión.9 En este punto adhiero a y coincido con los trabajos deDaroqui (2005), Chancy (2010),Gardaretti (2011), Knepper (2012,Munro (2010),Maeseneer (2006),Pulitano (2008),Stecher y Oliva (2011).…”

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El lugar de la insistencia: una aproximación a los prefacios alógrafos de Edwidge Danticat

Quant¹

2018

humanidades

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Todos los derechos reservados. Universidad de Costa Rica. Esta revista se encuentra licenciada con Creative Commons. Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Costa Rica. Correo electrónico: humanidades@ucr.ac.cr/ Sitio web: http: //revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/ humanidades Vol. 9 (1), 2019 / EISSN: 2215 -3934 2 Jaime Morales Quant El lugar de la insistencia: una aproximación a los prefacios alógrafos de Edwidge DanticatResumen En el siguiente ensayo, abordo una dimensión de la obra de Edwidge Danticat que no ha sido estudiada sistemáticamente: la configuración de sus prólogos alógrafos. Me interesa aproximarme a las introducciones de The Butterfly's Way:Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Haiti Noir y Haiti Noir 2, entendiéndolas como espacios de la repetición. Y, en este sentido, defiendo dos hipótesis centrales: 1) a través de los prefacios, Danticat reitera un tópico fundamental que ya es visible en sus primeras producciones narrativas. Me refiero a las manifestaciones de la vida precaria o vulnerable en Haití, es decir, a las formas en las que un ser humano se encuentra expuesto a otro, bajo las fuerzas de la opresión o del afecto (Butler, 2006(Butler, , 2010. Desde una posición crítica, la escritora examina prácticas de violencia física y cuestiona discursos que reducen simbólicamente a los sujetos (Didi-Huberman, 2014); 2) en relación con lo anterior, repite procedimientos que se mueven entre un libro y otro, un prólogo y otro, y dentro del prólogo mismo: el uso de una narradora en primera persona, elecciones léxicas y gramaticales, escenas de escritura, esquemas de exposición de la información, citas, paráfrasis y polisemias. Palabras clave: violencia, estereotipo, escritura, Haití In the following essay, I address a dimension of the Edwidge Danticat's work that has not been studied systematically: the configuration of her allograph prefaces. I am interested in approaching the introductions of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Haiti Noir, Haiti Noir 2, understanding them as spaces of repetition. And, in this regard, I defend two central hypotheses: 1) through the prefaces, Danticat repeats an important topic that is visible in her first narrative works.I refer to the manifestations of precarious or vulnerable life in Haiti, that is to say, the ways in which a human being is exposed to others, under the forces of oppression or affect (Butler, 2006(Butler, , 2010. From a critical position, the writer examines practices of physical violence, and questions discourses that reduce symbolically to social subjects (Didi-Huberman, 2014); 2) in relation to this, the author repeats narrative procedures that move between one book and the other, one preface and the other, and inside the preface: the use of first person narrator, grammatical and lexical elections, writing scenes, information exposure schemes, quotes, paraphrase and polysemy. AbstractKeywords: violence, stereotype, writing, Haiti El lugar de la insistencia.

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“…The complex relationship between empire, criminality and the juridical in the post-9/11 world is further explored by Wendy Knepper (2012) who shows how immigrants to the United States are policed and detained indefinitely in quasi-prison facilities that exist in spaces outside of the law. In her article "In/Justice and Necro-Natality in Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying", Knepper, like Morton, is interested in how the state criminalizes those it regards as suspicious.…”

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confidence: 99%

Crime narratives and global politics

Evans

White

2012

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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In a study offering postcolonial perspectives on crime fiction, Christine Matzke and Susan Mühleisen observe that the "boundaries of the genre have become fuzzier than ever, stretching over a wide range of registers, themes and styles". The growing diversity within crime fiction, they suggest, has created a need for new critical paradigms (2006: 2). This symposium has two related aims: first, it examines the changing formal characteristics of crime narratives, and second, and more importantly, it considers how, in an age in which crime takes the form of terrorism, industrial disaster, state violence, corporate corruption, drug wars, and cyber scams, conceptions of crime and criminality are being challenged and reconfigured within these narratives. A key concern of the symposium is the shift from a mode of writing that endorses the colonial project to one that reflects critically upon its legacies. In this respect, it extends Matzke's and Mühleisen's comparison of crime fiction in the colonial era, which often served to reaffirm imperial power, to a postcolonial mode of crime writing that questions the social order, launching an investigation of "power and authority" (2006: 4-5).This transferral of focus from the individual to the social system as the subject of investigation is not a new phenomenon in crime writing. In his account of the evolution of detective fiction, Martin Priestman refers to two "national" traditions: the English detective story, beginning with Wilkie Collins in the 1860s and continuing into the interwar "Golden Age" dominated by Agatha Christie, and the US hardboiled private-eye style of detective fiction initiated by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, which Priestman suggests evolved in "conscious opposition" to the English model of the detective novel (2003: 2). The clear-cut rationality of the detective figure who upholds law and order in the "clue-puzzle" English tradition can be compared to the confusion and angst of the private eye negotiating a corrupt and morally questionable society whose institutions cannot be trusted. As Andrew Pepper explains, "one of the distinctive features of the hardboiled crime novel has traditionally been the problematic nature of notions like 'law ' and 'justice'" (2003: 212).

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In/justice and necro-natality in Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

The “unimaginable border” and bare life in Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy

The “unimaginable border” and bare life in Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy

El lugar de la insistencia: una aproximación a los prefacios alógrafos de Edwidge Danticat

Crime narratives and global politics

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