Calibrations

Proposes an entirely new socially and politically conscious way of reading Ato Quayson explores a practice of reading that oscillates rapidly between domainsthe literary-aesthetic, the social, the cultural, and the politicalin order to uncover the mutually illuminating nature of these domains. He does this not to assert the often repeated postmodernist view that there is nothing outside the text, but to outline a method of reading he calls calibrations: a form of close reading of literature with what lies beyond it as a way of understanding structures of transformation, process, and contradiction that inform both literature and society. Quayson surveys a wide array of textsranging from Bob Marley lyrics, Toni Morrisons work, Walter Benjamins Theses on the Philosophy of History, and Althussers reflections on political economyand treats a broad range of themes: the comparative structures of alienation in literature and anthropology, cultural heroism as a trope in African society and politics, literary tragedy as a template for reading the life and activism of Ken Saro-Wiwa, trauma and the status of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa, representations of physical disability, and the clash between enchanted and disenchanted time in postcolonial texts.