Skip navigation
  • Home
  • Browse
    • Communities
      & Collections
    • Browse Items by:
    • Publication Date
    • Author
    • Title
    • Subject
    • Department
  • Sign on to:
    • My MacSphere
    • Receive email
      updates
    • Edit Profile


McMaster University Home Page
  1. MacSphere
  2. Open Access Dissertations and Theses Community
  3. Open Access Dissertations and Theses
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/6257
Title: IMAGINING JUSTICE: THE POLITICS OF POSTCOLONIAL FORGIVNESS AND RECONCILIATION
Authors: McGonegal, Julie
Advisor: O`Brien, Susie
Department: English
Keywords: English Language and Literature;English Language and Literature
Publication Date: Sep-2004
Abstract: <p>Possibly owing to a spirit of millenarianism, discourses of forgiveness and reconciliation have emerged as powerful scripts of interracial and interethnic negotiation in states struggling with the legacies of colonialism. This study examines the representation and production of these discourses in contemporary fiction by J.M. Coetzee, Joy Kogawa, David Malouf, and Michael Ondaatje. It argues that although they disconcel1 or stupefy critics situated in postmodern contexts, the rhetoric and rituals that structure reconciliation processes may be crucial to a departure from colonialist and racist relations, and to the commencement of a more democratic future. Using a postcolonial methodology, Imagining Justice challenges assumptions that discourses of forgiveness and reconciliation necessarily entail a rush to closure, repression of memory, or recuperation by power. Ultimately it suggests that if the prerogative of oppressed groups to devise their terms is conceded, forgiveness and reconciliation may render radical revision to prevailing systems of violence and injustice imaginable.</p>
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/6257
Identifier: opendissertations/1580
2113
1255685
Appears in Collections:Open Access Dissertations and Theses

Files in This Item:
File SizeFormat 
fulltext.pdf
Open Access
8.72 MBAdobe PDFView/Open
Show full item record Statistics


Items in MacSphere are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship     McMaster University Libraries
©2022 McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4L8 | 905-525-9140 | Contact Us | Terms of Use & Privacy Policy | Feedback

Report Accessibility Issue