Manzanas , Ana & Jesus Benito, Intercultural Mediations: Hybridity and Mimesis in American Literatures , Berlin: LIT. Verlag, 2003 .

Intercultural Mediations proposes a study of the multiple crossings between and among the different literary traditions of the United States. The volume draws upon two main theoretical sources, namely postcolonial theory and American Border Studies, and aims to articulate a model of the hybrid, postcolonial and liminal nature of writing in the US. Ana Mª Manzanas and Jesús Benito explore the nature of the ethnic Others appropriation, dialogization and subversion of the Euroamerican authoritative discourse embodied in what the authors call the Book of the West, as well as the inscription of cultural difference on the white page. Their analysis focuses on the production of contestatory sites of enunciation in a few particular fields and texts from the literatures of the US, such as John Milton Oskison's "The Problem of Old Harjo," Toni Morrisons Beloved , Helena Viramontes's "The Cariboo Café," Carlos Fuentes's La frontera de cristal , Ron Arias's The Road to Tamazunchale , Frederick Douglass's Narrative , Louise Erdrich's Tracks , José Barreiros The Indian Chronicles , and Caryl Phillip's Crossing the River . The authors use a comparative approach which underscores the aesthetic and epistemic ruptures that ethnic and marginalized writing is producing on Western cultures general text, in order to open up new sites of enunciation and new spaces for the hybridization of traditional hegemonic discourses.

Contents:       

- Introduction: Trickster Mediations
1    The Cultural Encounter and the Western Book
2    Hybridity, Mestizaje and Writing
3    (Repeating) Border Narratives
4    Hybrid Realities: Magic Realism and Tricksterism
5    Reaching through the Loop: Mimetic Writings and Chiastic Stories
- Postscript: Writing / Not Writing: (Un)willing Scriveners
- Bibliography
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