Writing Diaspora in the West

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxix

   PDF

2. First Person Reflection: Origins of the Marginal Disposition

   • Peter McCarthy

   Pages 1-22

3. Of Home and Hearth: Maps, Histories and Territorial Claims

   • Peter McCarthy

   Pages 23-59

4. The Subject Missing: Erasure and the Reflexive Margin

   • Peter McCarthy

   Pages 60-88

5. Conflation, Contradiction and the Colonized Mind

   • Peter McCarthy

   Pages 89-114

6. The Curious Heimat: Fetishism, Rupture, Boundary

   • Peter McCarthy

   Pages 115-139

7. Back Matter

   Pages 140-179

   PDF

In this bold intervention into the understanding of the diasporic experience within cultural studies, McCarthy challenges a critical position emergent over the last thirty years (what he calls the 'new marginalism'). He confronts the liberal orthodoxies that prevail in this area, exposing contradictions in the thinking of its major theorists.

• bibliography
• Cultural Studies
• experience
• flat
• identity
• knowledge
• subject
• understanding
• writing

'Not shying away from controversy, indeed inviting it, Peter McCarthy has written a bold book that deconstructs the assumptions of diaspora studies. He demonstrates that postcolonial and poststructuralist theorists have appropriated and identified with the subject of their study - marginalization. By adopting epistemological privilege for the diasporic experience, they claim explanatory insight into human affairs. The book will both infuriate and inspire those interested in diaspora, transnationalism, and postcolonialism.' - Gregory Jusdanis, Distinguished Humanities Professor, Ohio State University, USA

PETER MCCARTHY is Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

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