Working and Writing for Tomorrow: Essays in Honor of Itala Vivan

The rationale behind this collection of essays is provided by the Saidian notion of the intellectual as a political actìvist, a cultural interpreter, and a traveller through cultures and worldviews. As the title of the book suggests, being an academic today entails working in the ethical/political field of education and writing (in the sense of doing research and disseminating knowledge) with the sense of being in the world and having a project for tomorrow in mind: a future of beneficial dialogical encounters, critical awareness, and mutual understanding. The key notion of encounter— physical, intellectual, cultural—necessarily permeates the intellectual's interest in socio-cultural phenomena and transformations, and also the work of this volume's contributors. The contributions deal with English, Black-British, North-American, Caribbean, and African literatures and cultures, and postcolonial theory and writing. Their main temporal focus is on the present: they are variously concerned with the here and now, as they analyze complex representations of culture in specific geographic and historical contexts. Special attention to ongoing processes of identity formation and to power relations between hegemonic and marginal discourses and positions is found throughout the collection, so that interesting reading paths across cultural borders can be followed