Henry James and the “Aliens” intervenes substantially in current debates in James studies, most notably in the key areas of cultural studies, ethnic studies and queer studies. Focusing throughout on questions of identity, and most prominently on how the latter is given shape in the very form of the late style, the book finds that James’s response to the ethnic other can be grasped neither as an attempt to police, supervise and master the other, nor as a politics of non-identical surrender to that other. Instead, there is a continuum of identity—akin to the “criminal continuity” that James registers throughout the American scene—in which self and other, native and alien, subject and object adopt alternate roles of control and submission. Both are at times in possession of the American scene and possessed by that scene. Jamesian sexual identity, too, proves to be constantly reconstituted in transitive processes of signification that make it impossible to fix the “I” or the “other” within a fixed framework—be that framework a heterosexual or a homosexual one. The eroticism that strikingly informs the late James can therefore only be captured, if at all, under the rubric of the “queer.”

Nog niet zo heel erg lang geleden meende men te kunnen zeggen wat maatschappelijke klassen precies waren, welke er zoal concreet te onderscheiden vielen en hoe ze historisch gesproken opereerden. De historisch-materiele werkelijkheid lijkt echter steeds minder te stroken met deze diagnose. Parallel aan de desintegratie van de opvatting van de geschiedenis als teleologisch proces, valt een meer heterogene invulling van het begrip 'klasse' waar te nemen. Specifieke klassen heten nu op dynamische wijze tot stand te komen in een complex maatschappelijk spel waarbij, naast voorheen alles bepalende economische factoren, onder meer ook etnie en nationaliteit, gender en seksualiteit, religie, levensbeschouwing en nog tal van andere factoren in het geding zijn. Deze historische verschuiving in het denken over klassen heeft uiteraard ook verreikende gevolgen voor de literatuurwetenschap en naar die gevolgen wil deze bundel artikels peilen. De vragen die de hier verzamelde onderzoekers bezighouden zijn onder meer: Wat zijn de precieze modaliteiten van de herijking van het klassenbegrip op literatuur- en cultuurtheoretisch vlak, en wat is van die evolutie merkbaar in de verschillende nationale contemporaine literaturen? Wat zijn 'de kosten en de baten' van de kentering in het klassenconcept; wat is de reele meerwaarde van de complexere, meer heterogene visie op klasse? Maar ook: Tot op welke hoogte steekt achter de nieuwe termen en problematieken een zekere schatplichtigheid aan de denkmodellen die men nochtans achter zich wil laten? En in welke mate verschillen de huidige trends van vroegere pogingen in de 20ste eeuw - bijvoorbeeld tijdens het interbellum - om een al te strak ideologisch klassenbegrip te overstijgen?

Literature traditionally holds a special place in society. This fact can be ascribed especially to literature's unique capability to urge its audience and readers to allow a voice other than their own to resound within. And yet, literature's role raises questions regarding one's responsibility and engagement - questions that nearly every generation asks itself time and again with an ever changing urgency. Eight literary scholars from the research group 'Literature - Ethics - Law' (Ghent University) focus on this complex dialogue between literature and ethics. In the process, they arrive at answers that tease out crucial historical developments (from Plato to HIV/AIDS-prose), while also attending to the impact of methodological reevaluations during the search for such answers.

America es una sola aunque pocos lo crean, un dia por encima del Pentägono y las bananas y el petr6leo los hombres comprenderän la imbecilidad incurable de los nacionalismos. Julio Cortäzar Ultimo Round The essays collected in this volurne arose out of a workshop at the 1992 Conference of the European Association for American Studies in Seville. The overall theme of that conference was "The American Colurnbiad: 'Discovering' America, Inventing the United States. " Feel­ ing somewhat ill at ease with the clarification of this theme in the EAAS Newsletter of October 1990, which explained that the "central concern" of the conference would be to study the "making of a country which is more than just a country, but also and quintessentially a dream, a fic­ tion, a continuous creation . . . ", we decided to organize a workshop that would focus on literary texts which implicitly or explicitly stand in opposition to the concept that the making of the North American nation is "quintessentially a dream. " While for many representing a dream, the making of the American nation deferred and destroyed at the same time the dreams of many others. The texts that interested us would therefore be such as foreground the hegemonic and power-related aspects that that making entailed and entails. The title that we chose for our workshopwas "Deferring a Dream: Literary Sub-Versions of the American Colurnbiad. " The hyphen in sub­ version is not entirely accidental.