Michael Ondaatje: Haptic Aesthetics and Micropolitical Writing

This study of selected literary and cinematic works by Michael Ondaatje investigates the political potential of the Canadian author's aesthetics. Contributing to current debates about affect and representation, ideology critique and the artwork, trauma and testimony, this book uses the concept of the haptic to demonstrate how Ondaatje's multisensory, fluid and historically inflected writing can forge an enabling relationship between audience, author and text. This is where Ondaatje's micropolitics, often misconstrued as ideologically suspect aestheticism, emerges: a praxis that intimates how one can write and read politically with a difference.

Milena Marinkova is the co-editor of Visions of Canada: Canadian Studies in Europe, and has publications in Moving Worlds and The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She teaches Contemporary, Postcolonial and Canadian Literature at the University of Birmingham and the University of Leeds, UK. 

Acknowledgements
Table of contents

Introduction

The multiple senses of the haptic
A touch affectionate but troubling
Michael Ondaatje: Writing politically with a difference
Notes

Chapter I: Haptic Writing as Affective Cinema
Hapticizing the 'I' / 'eye' in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Coming through the haptic cut: History in the making and Coming through Slaughter
Humble Affections of the Cinematic: Michael Ondaatje's Films of the 1970s
Notes

Chapter II: Micropolitical Hapticity and Witness Writing
'Touching into words' the intimacy of witness writing in Running in the Family
Witnessing the body/The body witnessing in Anil's Ghost
Notes

Chapter III: Haptic Writing and Micropolitical Betrayals
'A falling together of accomplices' in In the Skin of a Lion: Writing, history, betrayal
Between the grope of the hand and the sight of a rifle: The betrayal of propinquity in The English Patient Betrayals of the Cinematic: Anthony Minghella's The English Patient
Notes

Epilogue: The Haptic in Literature: Hiding, Playing, Educating
Notes

Bibliography

Index

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.