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Document Details : Title: Een kruiwagen vol benzine Subtitle: Media-technologie in Cola Debrots Mijn zuster de negerin Author(s): VAN DIJK, Yra Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 58 Issue: 4 Date: 2016 Pages: 459-486 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.58.4.3200587 Abstract : Mijn zuster de negerin (My Sister the Negro) is a novella from 1934 that was much admired by – amongst others – Menno ter Braak. Although it has now all but disappeared from academic curricula, it deserves a central place in postcolonial Literary Studies and in comparative Caribbean Culture Studies. The critical importance of the text for cultural memory of slavery and the colonial era will be demonstrated by an analysis of the text from a combination of a media-technological and a postcolonial perspective. What does the foregrounding of media (such as ships, guns, clocks and lamps) imply for the representation of colonial violence? Apparent binaries turn out to be more ambivalent, and human bodies, nature and media are entangled in a complex network. In the critical memory of a violent and patriarchal history there is a crucial role for the technologies of writing. |
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