Lexington Books
Pages: 140
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-7936-1601-2 • Hardback • March 2020 • $100.00 • (£77.00)
978-1-7936-1602-9 • eBook • March 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Elham Shayegh is associate professor of English at the American University of Armenia.
Introduction
Chapter I: A Postcolonial Otherness
Chapter II: Logocentrism
Chapter III: Cultural Dialogue
Chapter IV: Compromising Binaries
Chapter V: On Hospitality
Conclusion: A Poststructuralist Otherness
Taking her cue from Derrida’s writing about différance and hospitality, Elham Shayegh presents an enlightening comparative reading of the poetry of Rumi and Whitman, in order to model a less reified relationship between self and other than the one that tosses up rhetoric—from all sides—about a “clash of civilizations.” This is a hopeful book that deserves a readership in these difficult times.
— Keith Tuma, professor of English at Miami University, editor of Miami University Press
At a moment when cross cultural dialogue seems particularly strained, Sufism and Transcendentalism: A Poststructuralist Dialogue Between Rumi and Whitman is a timely reminder of the political possibilities of poetry. Working across disparate time periods and geographies, this book daringly refuses to make history the most important interpretive framework for poetry. In doing so, it revealed to me a Whitman whom I had never fully considered and forced me to rethink some of the assumptions of postcolonial theory.
— Andrew Hebard, Miami University