Afterlives of colonialism

Nostalgia, reader’s response and the case of Noel Barber’s Tanamera

Bibliographic Data

ID9002433
AuthorsVandana Saxena (0000-0003-2579-4938, Xiamen University Malaysia, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume58
Issue2
Pages340-358
Publication date2020-12-31
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989420971331
OpenAlexW3121030218
LanguageEN
References cited13

Noel Barber’s Tanamera plots the story of Singapore during World War II as an adventure and interracial romance. Published in 1981, Tanamera enjoyed immense popularity along with other colonial romances that circulated at the time. This article explores readers’ continuing fascination with the genre of colonial romance. Read in light of the postcolonial theory, the study turns to the way the reading public outside academia responds to the colonial imaginary and the extent to which it shapes the collective memory of the empire. The article focuses on Tanamera as a case study for its representations of history and memory of colonialism

Adventure · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Empire · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Popularity · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Romance · The Imaginary · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Travel Writing and Literature

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