The Left Hand of Otherness, Habib Ajroud; Diagonals: The Discovery and Recovery of New Objects of Thought, Stephen Clucas; Scholarship in a Hot Climate, Mustapha Marrouchi; Alternative Wor(l)ds: Homi bhabha, Cultural criticism and the Peripheral Scene, Sadok Bouhlila; Words of Power: The Use of References to the Arabian Nights (and Other Eastern Story collections) in English literary responses to Empire and neo-colonialism, Peter L. Caracciolo; D.H. Lawrence and the Orient, Hans Joachim Possin; Anglo-Orient: A Name for “Airy Nothing”, Mohsen Jassim Al Mussawi; Across Boundaries: Where Historical Construct Meets Political Action, Anne Murray; Responding to Silence: a Study of two Short Poems, Mark Lilly; Boundaries and the Strange Death of Laurence Sterne, Carol Watts; Shadows Are the Matter, Jamaleddine Maouati; On the Brink of Fiction: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Integration in André Brink’s States of Emergency, Lotfi Ben Rejeb; Teiresias and the Insight of Blindness, Janet Fouli; Flannery O'Connor: the Way to Otherness, Nessima Tarchouna; Crossing the Boundaries of Creativity: The Early work of Wyndham Lewis, Robert Murray; Algiers -- The Cape: The Language of Frantz Fanon, David Davies; Crossing Linguistic Boundaries: Some Tunisian Data, Sarah Lawson and Itesh Sachdev; Loan Words in English, Raoudha Kammoun; The Sentence as Boundary, Imed Ben Ammar; Playing with Space: Contemporary British Drama, Peter Mudord; Cross-Dressing: Androgyny and Transvestism in some Shakespearian Plays, Jalel Boussedra; Hamlet: A Tunisian Adaptation, Mongi Raddadi.
ABSTRACT:
Ontologically, a boundary is both a limit and a crossing point In this sense our title might sound somewhat redundant. However, it is the whole power game involved in crossing over that makes up the problematic and the interest of the subject. Indeed, there is on the one hand the 'erasure' of the conquered subject by the superseding conqueror. On the other hand, there is the fusion of two matching mates, with the achievement of all the wonderful, but also all the terrible, potentialities of such a coming together. The defence/attack of such a limit stems from the idea one has formed of the power to be gained/preserved from such a posture.
Consistent with our customary multifold approach, this volume explores various kinds of boundaries: language boundaries are scrutinised, the significance of linguistic and cultural use of loans is highlighted and new latitudes are explored that are born of disruptions of gender, space, etc.
In invest igating relations between cultures, Across Boundaries examines both the notions of relatedness and process. Learning is one such process. An ongoing process that will shun definitive conclusions and the comfort of acquired positions. Moreover, as Edward Said pointed out in his Reith Lectures, amateurism is no academic ill and can in fact help avoid hypocritical condonation of political and moral wrong. It is incumbent upon intellectuals to speak "truth to power," and the need for this is even greater where a fragile civil society renders their position vulnerable. Walking the tightrope of truthfulness is a condition of intellectual commitment to loyalty. Indeed, while he belongs to a national and cultural context, an inetellectual also relates to the cross-boundary community of world academia. Both locations remain, paradocically, both a starting point and a stumbling block. Crossing the boundaries between East and West is the concern of a number of papers in this volume.
