Culture Agonistes

Recent developments in cultural and literary discourse have upset traditional certainties and produced a plurality of positions that are often articulated in agonistic terms. Culture Agonistes both reflects this conflictual diversity and engages with the dialogic exchange taking place in cultural locations, discursive contexts and narrative histories. Born out of an International Conference on Culture and American Studies organized by the Hellenic Association for American Studies and the University of Athens (2000), this volume addresses a wide scope of controversial issues. It raises questions about the value of the aesthetic in current artistic and critical practices, the effects of globalization in relation to feminism and postcolonialism, and the imbrication of modernism with gender and consumer culture. Moreover, it highlights the challenges to canonical texts posed by revisionist mythmaking and translatability as well as the destabilizing condition of exilic consciousness. The mix of voices and approaches represented by the contributors indicate their engagement in discursive contestations that seek to transform sites of conflict into sites of revision and innovation.